New Delhi, June 8
Following criticism from all quarters, including the Congress, the UPA government today decided to drop the newly introduced form 2F for filing income tax returns.

It also announced to withdraw 10 per cent customs duty on pulses to bring down prices in the domestic market that witnessed a rise of around 40 per cent over the past one month.

In a hurriedly called press conference, Revenue Secretary K.M. Chandrasekhar said, “The government has decided to withdraw the IT form and will come up with a new form next year after getting feedback from all quarters.”

He said, “The new four-page form that replaces the one-page ‘Naya Saral (simple) form’ is meant for only this year and will be optional for filing returns till July 21.”

The Opposition parties and Congress MPs had questioned the utility of the form that would have made it mandatory for the income tax assessees to keep a record of household expenditure, small investments and day-to-day purchases besides submitting a cash flow statement of their income.

Experts had warned that average assessees would have required the services of tax consultants to fill the form, despite the fact that over 40 per cent of assessees did not pay any tax at all.

“The new form would have put an additional burden of crores of rupees on the IT assessees as they would have to pay to tax consultants to fill the form,” said a chartered accountant.

The Revenue Secretary said the salaried tax assesses would have the option of filing income tax returns this year either in the existing Naya Saral form or the new form called 2F.

The decision was taken following indication of displeasure by Congress president Sonia Gandhi. She was reportedly worried about consequences of rise in inflation and harassment of assessees due to the new form.

The Income Tax Department was in the process of improving the existing Form 16AA provided by the employers indicating the tax deducted at source from its employees.