File your income tax return before the due date of July 31.

With less than four weeks to go before the deadline of filing income tax returns (ITR), it is time to document some of the important things to remember while filing your ITR. The last date of filing your ITR for financial year 2016-17 is July 31. Some of the important things to remember are as follows:

1. Mandatory to quote Aadhaar

The Supreme Court of India, allowed the government to make it mandatory for all individuals to quote Aadhaar to file is return online. Hence the taxpayer has to mention the 12-digit Aadhaar number or the 28-digit Aadhaar enrolment number while filing the income tax return.

2. Key changes in ITR Forms for FY16-17

To simplify the process of filing ITRs, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has made some amendments in the forms. Firstly, the number of ITR forms have been reduced from nine to seven. Three of the earlier ITR forms—ITR-2, ITR-2A and ITR-3—have been rationalised and a single ITR-2 form has replaced them.

Consequently, ITR-4 and ITR-4S (Sugam) have been renumbered as ITR-3 and ITR-4 (Sugam), respectively. The new ITR- 1 (Sahaj) form is a one-page form and it can only be filed by an individual with (taxable) income of up to Rs 50 lakh a year. This will include salary income, interest income and income from one house property. Those who have income of more than Rs 50 lakh or own more than one house property, they will have to file ITR-2 form.

3. Mention all bank accounts

It is important that taxpayers mention all their bank account numbers and their IFSC code in their ITR. However, dormant accounts which have been in-operational for the past three years need not be mentioned.

4. Use form 16 for salary income

By now all individual tax payers must have received their Form 16 from their respective employers. Form 16 is a certificate from your employer. It has details of salary paid by them to you and taxes deducted on it. Form 16 is issued once for a particular financial year, on or before May 31 of the next year. The taxable salary as mentioned in Form 16 goes into the income tax return under the salary head.

5. Download Form 26AS

Form 26AS can be downloaded from the income tax website. This form has details of all the TDS that has been deducted against your income(s). It includes TDS deducted on salary and if there's any TDS deducted on fixed deposit interest the same can also be seen in this tax credit statement.

6. New mandatory disclosure

In order to account for those who had deposited Rs 2 lakh or more in a bank account during the demonetisation period the tax department has introduced a new column where the person filing tax will have to give details in the ITR of the money deposited as well as details of bank account such as name of bank, IFSC code and account number. Besides that, if any assessee has any unexplained income or investments, he has to report such unexplained income in the new ITR forms and such amount will be taxable at the tax rate of 60 percent plus surcharge and cess.

It is important to keep the above basic points in mind for filing your income tax return this season. Also, remember that the time period for revision of income tax return has been cut to 1 year (from 2 years earlier) from the end of the relevant financial year or before completion of assessment, whichever is earlier.