The Board said that in the proposed forms standardizsation of common information has been done across the forms with a view to reducing the compliance burden of the tax payers
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SIVA SARAVANAN S
Income Tax Department on Saturday proposed reducing number of rules by around 35 per cent and eliminating more than half of the forms under new Income Tax Act. The act will be effective from April 1 this year.
“The Income-tax Rules, 1962 contains 511 rules and 399 forms. As a result of the changes proposed in new rules and forms, including removal of redundancy and consolidation of rules wherever possible, draft Income-tax Rules, 2026 contains 333 rules and 190 forms,” a note on Draft Income-tax Rules & Forms, 2026, issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said. Stakeholders can give their views within next 15 days, after which subordinate legislations will be framed.
The Board said that in the proposed forms standardisation of common information has been done across the forms with a view to reducing the compliance burden of the tax payers. “Forms have been designed in a smart way so as to provide for automated reconciliation and also prefill capabilities so as to make filing more intuitive and less error-prone. They would also enable centralised processing and data driven decision making so that the technology is used to provide better services to the taxpayers,” the Board said.
According to Sandeepp Jhunjhunwala, Partner at Nangia Global in the reworking of rules and forms, noteworthy is the long-overdue rationalisation of archaic perquisite thresholds, such as tax free at-work meal value, gift received from employer, etc – a reform that has been widely sought and brings the income tax framework closer in line with contemporary economic realities.
“A marked difference also appears to have been made in the definition of Accountant for the purpose of various certification under the new Income Tax Act, which now stands revised to individual professionals with not less than 10 years-experience and annual receipt in the year preceding certification to be more than ₹50 lakh and in case of Partners in any entity engaged in rendering accountancy or valuation services, the annual receipt of the entity in the year preceding certification, exceeds ₹3 crore,” he said.
Published on February 7, 2026