I-T dept releases draft rules, forms for new Income Tax Act; seeks public inputs

I-T department invites public feedback on draft rules and forms for the new Income Tax Act, aiming to simplify compliance.

The tax department on Saturday (February 7, 2026) released draft rules and forms under the new Income Tax Act, 2025, which proposes to simplify the provisions and reduce compliance burden for ease of understanding and make it taxpayer-friendly.

A new and simplified Income Tax Act, 2025, which will replace the over six-decade-old Income Tax Act of 1961, will come into effect from April 1.

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The Income Tax department has sought comments from stakeholders on the draft Income-tax Rules, 2026, and forms by February 22. Thereafter, the rules and forms under the new Act will be notified.

The Income-tax Rules, 1962 contains 511 rules and 399 forms. As a result of the changes proposed in the new rules and forms, including the removal of redundancy and consolidation of rules wherever possible, the draft Income-tax Rules, 2026 contains 333 rules and 190 forms, the I-T department said while inviting stakeholder comments.

With regard to the new income tax forms, it said that they have been simplified to a large extent for the ease of the taxpayers. Standardisation of common information has been done across the forms with a view to reducing the compliance burden of the taxpayers.