Need and Features of New Sahaj ITR-1 form

Why Suhaj is introduced in the first place?

Centralized Processing Center’s have been set up all over the country with the primary objective of processing returns on a bulk processing basis instead of case by case Processing.  The automated environment at CPC requires forms to be designed in manner which would double the digitization productivity.

What is digitization?

Digitization is conversion of manual return forms to Digitized XML Data which is fed to the Processing Engine for Processing.

Some of the problems noticed in Digitization.

1. Diversity in ITR Forms. CPC received approximately 36 types of earlier ITR-1. Non Standard Forms act as a bottleneck for faster processing at CPC. It is in this light that Digitization of Income Tax Return is probably the most complex Information Technology Projects in the world. SAHAJ and SUGAM would standardize the input forms to CPC and pave the way for a decade with faster processing and world class Taxpayer Services .
2. Huge Number of Fields in the form: ITR-4/5/6 has more than 1500 fields. To achieve Operational Efficiency with zero percent data entry errors in such a form is a daunting task. However a systematic analysis carried out by Income Tax Department showed that less than 10% of the fields were used in non-44AB audit cases. Therefore a Simplified Business Form was envisaged on lines of other countries like US, Malaysia. 
3. ITR Forms not adhering to International Form Processing Standards: The forms did not have registration marks, barcodes and many other OCR/ICR Enablement features which acted as a bottle neck in faster processing at CPC.  Based on this, the Form Redesign Committee was setup by Government.

Objectives of Form Redesign Committee:

• To faster processing for manual return forms which results in faster refund issue and world class Tax Payer’s Services
• To make the Form Tax Payer Friendly so as to reduce the complexities and ambiguities in the earlier forms 
• To Simplify the data entry process from the manual forms to meet the objective of processing of manual return forms within a shorter period of time 
• To enable segregation at the field offices and priortise based on pre-determined processing priority mainly to cater to the refund needs of various sections of the society. Top on the list being the senior citizens 
• To enable the scanning process of the ITR physical forms produce quality images so that rejections at the scanning level becomes minimal 
• To enable the data entry from the images and design of data entry operator friendly forms so that data capture is 100% accurate 
• To enable data entry validation through in-built validation rules so that mistakes can be plugged at form filling stages itself

New forms are designed for readable through machines so that paper returns can be uploaded in income tax department computer system automatically .But this change is problematic for assessees . Now you can not use these formS(Sahaj and Sugam) after printing it out from your black and white printer. Color scheme for these new forms has been specified