While ITR-1 is a simple form having only six pages, filling other ITR forms are much difficult and time consuming task as ITR-2 has 26 pages and ITR-3 has as much as 41 pages.

At the time of e-filing of Income Tax Return (ITR) for the Assessment Year (AY) 2019-20, the taxpayers eligible to file ITR-1 and ITR-4 have the benefit of using “Prepare and submit online” option on the incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in site. However, all the taxpayers can use tax filing utilities like Excel and Java to file their return.

While ITR-1 is a simple form having only six pages, filling other ITR forms are much difficult and time consuming task as ITR-2 has 26 pages and ITR-3 has as much as 41 pages. So, with the extended deadline to end in less than a week, assessees are in a hurry to gather all the required information and put those in the ITR form to complete the filing process on time to avoid attracting any penalty.

Some people may have filled the form before the original deadline of July 31, but didn’t submit it due to lack of few information and now find that they have to fill new version of the ITR form afresh as updated utilities have been introduced with the extended deadline.

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Moreover, due to heavy files with macros enabled, the Excel files often get hanged for several minutes to auto-save the data entered and also due to some other internal checking issues, thus pushing the time to fill the forms multiple times higher than filing a normal excel file. So, copying data from old version of the ITR form to the new version would be a difficult task, as once one of the two file gets hanged, the other file will not respond and both files would get hanged one after the other.

So, how to overcome such issues and fill the forms quickly is a matter of concern. However, the Income Tax (I-T) Department has some solutions to the address the issues, which would help you in filling the forms quickly.

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Filling ITR quickly using the right panel.
By importing data from previous version
In case you had filled the ITR form to a considerable extent in the older version, instead of filling the new version of the ITR form from scratch or copying the data from the old version to new version, you may use the ‘Import from Previous Version’ option to transfer data from old version to the new version. For this use the following steps.

Download the latest version of ITR excel utility from the e-filing portal and open it.

Click on ‘Import from excel utility of the same year’ button on the right panel (highlighted in yellow in the above picture).

Browse and select the saved excel file (previous version of the filled ITR excel utility) and click on ‘Open’ button.

On clicking the ‘Open’ button, all the information filled and saved into the previous version of the ITR excel utility will be imported to the latest version of the ITR excel utility, which you have to check thoroughly to ensure that all the data from previous version has been imported correctly. To complete the new version the ITR, fill in the additional fields, if any, before filing the return.

By using pre-filled XML
To fill an ITR form the scratch quickly, you may use the pre-filled XML option. For this take the following steps.

First log in to the incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in site and navigate to ‘My Account’ tab and select ‘Download Pre-filled XML’ link and save it aftet selecting the ITR form and assessment year. The pre-filled XML will contain your basic information, bank account details as well as income disclosed in Form 26AS along with TDS, if any.

Download the latest version of the ITR excel utility from the e-filing portal and open it.

Click on ‘Import from XML’ button on the right panel (highlighted in light blue in the above picture).

Browse and select the saved Prefilled XML and click on ‘Open’ button.

On clicking the ‘Open’ button, all the information available in the Prefilled XML will be imported to the ITR excel utility. Check all the data carefully before entering additional information to complete the ITR form in order to file the return.