Manual forms for income tax exemptions to be made electronic

The government on Monday proposed doing away with manual filing of application forms seeking exemption of tax on incomes received by a person on behalf of any other fund, university, educational institution, hospital, trust or any other institution. It proposed electronic filing of all such forms including form 10G meant for grant of approval for deduction in respect of donations to any fund or institution to which section 80G of the Income Tax Rules applies. 

The Income Tax Department issued the draft notification proposing the required amendments to the Income-Tax Rules seeking inputs from stakeholders and general public till November 12.

"Keeping in view the focus of the government on digital initiatives, as also the fact that the department is continuously automating its processes, it is imperative that manual filing of these applications should be done away with so as to ensure not only faster processing of the same but also to reduce the interface between the department and the applicant," it said in a statement.

"Further, there is also a need to rationalise the rules and forms to align with the requirements of the present times," it added.