Excel Utility Now Live for ITR-1, ITR-4: What Taxpayers Should Know Before Filing

The Income Tax Department has rolled out the Excel utilities to file income tax return (ITR) for ITR-1 and ITR-4 for the assessment year (AY) 2025-26 to give early birds a head start on their return filing. These offline tools are now available for download and use, allowing salaried individuals and small business owners to start preparing their returns for income earned between April 1, 2024, and March 31, 2025.

The move follows just days after the department extended the filing deadline for non-audited entities, which includes salaried taxpayers, to September 15, 2025.

What are the excel utilities to file ITRs?

If you are unfamiliar, these excel utilities are basically downloadable spreadsheets which replicate the ITR forms and let you fill in your income details offline.

You can download these excel utilities from the official website of the income tax department (https://www.incometax.gov.in/iec/foportal/) under the 'downloads’ section.

Inside these spreadsheets, the taxpayers need to fill up all the key sections accurately. For guidance, the sheet has a feature that explains and guides you through some columns which might be confusing at the time selection.

On the top right corner, you will find following eight options which are supposed to help you complete the sheet:

• Validate

• Next

• Calculate Tax

• Import JSON

• Import Prefill

• Generate JSON

• Print

• Help

When you are done filing in your details, you can click on the first option to validate/check the details. The steps following the same will allow you to complete the process in income tax calculations, importing the JSON file. To get guidance with the process, click on the ‘help’ option.

Once you are done with your (filled) excel spreadsheet, you can validate the information and convert it into a JSON file to upload on the income tax e-filing portal.

Who uses the ITR 1 and ITR 2 forms to file income tax returns?

Both ITR-1 (Sahaj) and ITR-4 (Sugam) are particularly rolled out for taxpayers who report simple financial profits. These are for salaried individuals and those who do not need to undergo a tax audit or maintain a detailed books of accounts.

Among these both:

The Sahaj ITR form is designed for salaried individuals or pensioners who have a total income up to Rs 50 lakh. Their income can include income from salary, one house property (without carry forward losses), and income from other sources like bank interest. Agriculture income is allowed, but only up to Rs 5,000.

The Sugam ITR form is used by small businesses or professionals (those who apply presumptive taxation) and earn income up to Rs 50 lakh. The form, which applies to individuals, HUFs, and firms (but not LLPs), also includes incomes from salary, one house property, and other sources

Key changes in these form this year

The income tax department had also rolled out new ITR forms this year, bringing some key changes to them that changes how you report your income tax gains. The most important change has been in the Capital Gains section which brings a relief for taxpayers, here’s how:

A small but significant update has been included in the new forms. The forms now have an added sedition to disclose your long-term capital gains (LTCG) under Section 112A for Rs 1.25 lakh. This change is supposed to help salaried taxpayers who earlier had to switch to more complex forms (like ITR-2), even for gains within the tax-exempt threshold. The experts have noted this as a helpful tweak that should simplify the filing experience for many.

The same goes for ITR-4, which now includes a provision for reporting such capital gains, as long as they fall within the exemption limit and are the only form of capital gain income for the year.

Should You File Now?

Technically, yes - you can file your income tax return now. But should you? Not necessarily. Many financial data points, including Form 16, Form 26AS, the Annual Information Statement (AIS), and Statement of Financial Transactions (SFT), are still in the process of being updated by the department. These are important to ensuring that the information in your return matches what’s on record with the tax department.