The filing cycle

No dates or thresholds here. Filing deadlines move, and a missed one has consequences, so the Department's own portal is the place to check them.

The year, renamed

Under the old Act you earned income in a "previous year" and were assessed in an "assessment year". Two years in every sentence, and people routinely used the wrong one — including on forms.

The Income-tax Act 2025 replaced "previous year" with "tax year", aligned with the financial year running 1 April to 31 March. One term, matching the year you actually lived through.

That is a small change with a real effect: a conversation about "the 2026-27 tax year" now means the year you earned the money, with no translation step.

What a return actually does

A return is a reconciliation, not a payment. It assembles:

• Income under each of the five heads from chapter 2
• Losses set off, and losses carried forward
• Deductions you are entitled to
• Tax already collected — the TDS and advance tax of chapter 5

and arrives at either a balance due or a refund.

Which is why chapter 5 insisted TDS is not settlement. The return is where the advance collection meets the actual liability, and the difference goes one way or the other.

Why an investor's return is more work

Three reasons, all avoidable with preparation.

Capital gains need transaction detail. Chapter 4: each lot has its own acquisition date and cost. A holding built through ten years of monthly purchases is many lots, and the gain on a partial redemption depends on which.

The fix is simple and has to happen on time: fund houses and brokers publish capital gains statements for the tax year. Download them. Reconstructing a decade of purchases from bank statements is a different kind of afternoon.

Interest is reported from multiple places. Every bank, every deposit, the savings account. Interest certificates exist for this, and the annual tax statement of chapter 5 is the cross-check.

Losses have procedural conditions. Chapter 4: a loss not reported correctly in the year it arose may not be available to carry forward, and that is not fixable later.

What to keep, and for how long

Contract notes and allotment advices — the evidence of your cost of acquisition. For a holding of twenty years, this is a document from twenty years ago, and nobody will reissue it.

Capital gains statements, per tax year, per institution.

Interest certificates.

Proof for every deduction claimed.

Property documents, purchase and improvement, which matter decades later.

The standing rule: keep acquisition evidence for as long as you hold the asset, and for several years after you sell it. The absence of records does not reduce a gain; it removes your ability to prove the cost, which increases the gain.

Fewer forms than there were

The new Act cut forms from 399 to 190, part of what the Department describes as a "reduced compliance burden".

For an ordinary individual this mostly shows up as fewer choices and fewer places to make a mistake. It does not change what you must report — chapter 1's point that the rewrite imposed no new taxes cuts both ways, and it removed no obligations either.

Doing it yourself or not

A judgement rather than a rule.

Yourself is reasonable for a salary, some interest, and straightforward mutual fund transactions, with the statements above in hand.

A chartered accountant earns their fee where there is a property sale, business income, foreign assets or income, a large or unusual capital gain, several years of losses to carry forward, or any exemption with conditions attached — chapter 4's point that most reliefs cannot be applied after the fact.

The expensive mistake is not paying for help. It is discovering after a transaction that a provision which would have applied needed something done beforehand.

The point

A tax year runs 1 April to 31 March and the return reconciles income across the five heads against tax already collected. An investor's return needs capital gains statements and interest certificates gathered on time, and acquisition evidence kept for as long as the asset is held. The new Act renamed the year and cut forms from 399 to 190 without changing what must be reported.