Income Tax Department releases ITR-1 and ITR-4 Excel utilities for FY 2024-25 (AY 2025-26). Know who can file, who can’t, and how to get started. File before the deadline—avoid costly mistakes.
Tax Filing Season 2025 Officially Begins
Income-Tax Department has commenced ITI filing season for fiscal year FY 2024–25 (AY 2025-26) with the introduction of the Excel utility for ITR-1 and ITR-4 by the Department. The batch before filing the return can now be downloaded from the income-tax e-filing initiated Aadhar portal, so early access taxpayers are ensuring return preparations. One of the key differences this year that I have found in new validation of ITR-1 utility – making filers verify eligibility before moving on.
ITR-1 Now Smarter: New Rule Flags Invalid Income Sources
One of the major releases this year is for the ITR-1 filers. With income tax department has also incorporated an auto-reject of the validation check, if these THS sections are found in filings — like 194B, 194BB,194S, etc. They should include almost all wins from online games, cryptos, lottery winnings, and some forms of capital gains. If they find such entries in your TDS data, then the return for ITR-1 becomes unavailable. For the other incomes, taxpayers fill out ITR-2 and so on.
Who Can Still Use ITR-1 Without a Hitch?
If you are a resident Indian earning up to ₹50 lacs from Salary+hme,1 house property, bock bond interest, and your long-term capital gains under Section 112A (up to ₹1.25lakh) IT returns from ITR-1 will be ideal. Anything agricultural income, even the least (Rs 5000) is permissible. For a company director, who holds unlisted shares or has foreign income/income/assets I can’t use ITR-1. maisas.
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ITR-4 is Also Live for Business and Freelancers
For resident individuals, HUFs, and firms (other than LLPs) in case of presumptive taxation schemes as per section 44AD, 44ADA, and 44AE i.e. taxable income not exceeding ₹50 lakhs now, ITR-4 utility is available. They can also use this for eligible capital gains under 112A. As per experts, ITR-4 has not seen any big changes, so it should be pretty much a cakewalk for regular filers.
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Start Early, Avoid Last-Minute Rush
Just fill your Excel one at a time: download, fill offline, save as JSON or XML from the portal, and submit it. This year the cut-off is September 15, 2025 (compared to the usual July 31st cut-off). If the utilities are updated and are live now, collect all the documents filed early from the collection of errors happening and CPC notices.
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