5 Common Mistakes to Avoid While Filing Your ITR

Most of the notices and follow-up queries we see after filing season aren't about anything complicated — they're about small, avoidable errors. Here are the five that come up most often.

1. Not reconciling with Form 26AS and AIS

Your Form 26AS and Annual Information Statement (AIS) show what banks, employers and other parties have already reported against your PAN — TDS, interest income, dividend income, high-value transactions. If your return doesn't match what's already on record, it's one of the most common triggers for a query from the tax department. Always cross-check both before filing, not after.

2. Choosing a regime without actually comparing

The new tax regime is the default, but that doesn't mean it's automatically better for you. If you have significant deductions — home loan interest, 80C investments, HRA, medical insurance — the old regime can still work out cheaper. This needs an actual side-by-side calculation each year, not a one-time decision you carry forward.

3. Missing income that doesn't come with a TDS certificate

Interest from savings accounts, fixed deposits below the TDS threshold, freelance income paid without deduction, capital gains from mutual funds — these are all taxable even when nobody deducted TDS on them or sent you a certificate. Leaving them out because "no one told me" doesn't hold up if the department's data shows otherwise.

4. Filing under the wrong ITR form

Using ITR-1 when you have capital gains, or when you hold foreign assets, or run a business — is a common error that can make the return defective. The right form depends on your sources of income and residential status, not just how simple you'd like the process to be.

5. Missing the verification step

A return that's filed but not verified (via e-verification or by sending a signed ITR-V) is treated as if it was never filed at all. This is a purely procedural step, but it's the one people forget most often after doing all the harder work correctly.

The general rule

Almost all of these come down to the same thing: the department already has more data about your income than most people assume, pulled from banks, employers, registrars and other reporting entities. The safest approach is to file a return that's consistent with that data, not just with what feels obvious from memory.