Budget 2020 proposes to pre-fill donation details made by a taxpayer in ITR

It has been proposed in Budget 2020 that income tax return (ITR) forms will come pre-filled with details of donations made by a taxpayer in a financial year. The FM said in her budget speech said: In order to ease the process of claiming deduction for donation, it is proposed to pre-fill the donee’s information in taxpayer’s return on the basis of information of donations furnished by the donee. This would result in hassle-free claim of deduction for the donation made by the taxpayer.

As per this proposal, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) will get the required information on donations from charitable institutions, which will then get automatically pre-filled in the the ITR forms.

Earlier, in the previous year, pre-filled ITR forms were made available to the taxpayers. The information available in such pre-filled ITRs was related to income received from employer and tax exemptions and deductions mentioned in the Form 16. Further if TDS had been deducted by the bank then such information from Form 16A were also pre-filled.


The income tax department had also provided pre-filled XML file which contains details such as employer details, allowances, deductions, dividend, and interest income and so on. The XML file can be downloaded by the individuals from the e-filing website and imported into the Excel utility of the relevant ITR form.

Individuals can file their income tax return either on the e-filing website,www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in or by filling the details in the excel utility downloaded from the e-filing website and uploading the same on the e-filing website.