If you’re reading this in the first week of August, you’re probably in one of two camps.
Either you’re a salaried person who let 31 July slip past and you’re now Googling at 11pm to figure out how bad it is. Or you’re a freelancer, consultant, doctor, small business owner — and you’ve got till 31 August, which sounds like plenty of time until you remember you haven’t opened your bank statements since April.
Both camps are fine. Neither is doomed.
But there’s a lot of half-correct information floating around right now, especially in Bangalore where the tax situations are genuinely messier than the rest of the country. Foreign stock. Two employers in one year. Rent that’s higher than most people’s EMIs. Side projects nobody wants to talk about. So let’s go through it properly.
The short version, if that’s all you came for
For FY 2025-26 (that’s Assessment Year 2026-27), the deadline depends on which ITR form applies to you — not on how much you earn. Salaried people filing ITR-1 or ITR-2 had until 31 July 2026. Business and professional income without a tax audit, filing ITR-3 or ITR-4, gets until 31 August 2026. Audit cases file by 31 October 2026. Missed yours? A belated return is open until 31 December 2026, with a late fee.
That’s the whole thing in five lines. Everything below is the why and the what now.
The 2026 deadline chart
| Who you are | Form | Due date |
|---|---|---|
| Salaried, pensioner, capital gains, no business income | ITR-1 / ITR-2 | 31 July 2026 (passed) |
| Freelancer, professional, small business — no audit needed | ITR-3 / ITR-4 | 31 August 2026 |
| Anyone whose accounts need a tax audit under 44AB | ITR-3 / ITR-5 / ITR-6 | 31 October 2026 (audit report by 30 Sept) |
| Transfer pricing cases | — | 30 November 2026 |
| Belated return (missed your date) | Any | 31 December 2026 |
| Revised return (found a mistake) | Any | 31 March 2027 |
One thing that catches people out every single year: the August 31 date is not a general extension. It’s tied to the form. Two people in the same house, same tax year, can have two different deadlines — one salaried, one running a shop. I’ve watched that exact argument happen. Nobody was wrong.
Here’s the thing though — the ITR-3/ITR-4 shift to 31 August isn’t a one-off relief this year. It’s a permanent structural change now, not a CBDT circular that showed up in June. So plan your Augusts accordingly going forward.
Why Bangalore filings go wrong more often than most
I’ll be straight with you. A salaried person in a tier-2 city with one Form 16 and an LIC premium has a fifteen-minute return. Bangalore rarely gives you that.
Here’s what actually shows up in a Bengaluru filing that doesn’t show up elsewhere.
1. Your RSUs. This is the big one.
If you work at a company whose parent is listed in the US — and in this city that’s an enormous chunk of the workforce — you almost certainly hold or have held shares in a foreign brokerage account. Morgan Stanley, E*TRADE, Fidelity, Schwab, whatever your company uses.
Those shares have to be declared in Schedule FA of your ITR. Not just the income from them. The asset itself.
And people get this wrong constantly because the logic feels backwards. Your RSU vesting already showed up as a perquisite in your Form 16. TDS was already cut. Tax already paid. So why declare anything?
Because Schedule FA isn’t about tax. It’s about disclosure. Two separate obligations. Vested shares sitting untouched in your E*TRADE account, a dormant foreign bank account from a two-year onsite stint, dividends of $14 — all of it goes in, and there’s no minimum value threshold that lets you skip the disclosure.
The penalty for missing it is where this stops being an academic point. Non-disclosure under Section 43 of the Black Money Act carries a flat ₹10 lakh hit — per undisclosed asset, per assessment year. And yes, tribunals have upheld it even in cases where the taxpayer did report the income and just forgot the asset schedule. That’s not a theoretical risk. That’s a settled pattern.
Also worth knowing: ITR-1 and ITR-4 don’t even contain Schedule FA. So if you hold foreign assets, you can’t use them — you’re on ITR-2 or ITR-3 regardless of how simple the rest of your return looks.
(There’s a one-time disclosure scheme announced in Budget 2026 for small taxpayers who genuinely didn’t know — the Foreign Assets of Small Taxpayers Disclosure Scheme. If you’ve got past years sitting undisclosed, that’s a conversation to have with a CA quickly rather than a thing to read a blog about. Time-bound window.)
2. You switched jobs. Both employers gave you the full exemption.
Very Bangalore. Very common. Very expensive.
When you join a new company in, say, October, that employer doesn’t know what you already claimed. So they give you the standard deduction, the full 80C runway, the whole HRA calculation — from scratch. Your old employer already gave you the same things for April to September.
Add both Form 16s together naively and you’ve claimed double. Which the department’s system sees immediately, because both employers filed TDS returns against your PAN.
The fix is boring but it works: declare both salaries, compute the deductions once across the full year, and pay the shortfall as self-assessment tax before filing. Most people who get a notice for this didn’t cheat. They just added two PDFs.
3. HRA, and the rent situation in this city
Rents in Koramangala, Indiranagar, HSR, Whitefield — you know the numbers. Which means Bangalore tenants routinely cross thresholds that people in other cities don’t think about.
Two rules to hold onto:
- If your annual rent crosses ₹1 lakh, you need your landlord’s PAN. No PAN, no HRA exemption. And ₹1 lakh a year is roughly ₹8,300 a month — basically everyone.
- If your monthly rent crosses ₹50,000, you are supposed to deduct TDS under Section 194-IB. The tenant. Not the landlord.
That second one is skipped by an incredible number of people. It’s not a huge amount of tax, but the compliance failure is the tenant’s, not the owner’s, and that surprises people.
And no — paying rent to your parents isn’t automatically a scam. It’s legal. It just has to be real: actual bank transfer, actual rent agreement, and the parent actually declaring it as income. Cash to your mother with a self-made receipt is the version that gets caught.
4. Freelance income, moonlighting, the second stream
Weekend consulting. A retainer with a US client. Design work. That AI side project that started making money. Anything like this pushes you out of ITR-1 and into ITR-3 or ITR-4 — and, conveniently, gives you the 31 August deadline.
If you’re a professional (consultant, designer, doctor, lawyer, architect, software professional) and gross receipts are within ₹75 lakh, Section 44ADA lets you declare 50% of receipts as profit and stop there. No books, no expense-by-expense justification. For a lot of Bangalore freelancers this is the single best-value thing in the tax code and it’s shocking how many don’t use it.
But — and this matters — once you have business income, switching between the old and new tax regime isn’t a yearly free choice anymore. There’s a Form 10-IEA to file before the due date, and switching back later is a once-in-a-lifetime move. Get that decision right the first time.
5. Crypto, F&O, and the trades you forgot about
Virtual digital assets are taxed flat at 30%, with 1% TDS on transfers, and losses can’t be set off against anything. Not against other crypto gains, not against salary. It’s a walled garden and it’s unforgiving.
F&O is a different animal — that’s business income, which means ITR-3, which means turnover computation, which means possibly an audit. Every year I hear about someone who did ₹4 lakh of casual index option trading, lost money on it, and assumed there was nothing to report. There was.
Pull your AIS. Everything’s in there.
Which ITR form is actually yours?
Quick decision path, no jargon:
- ITR-1 (Sahaj) — salary or pension, one or two house properties (this changed for AY 2026-27, second home no longer forces you out), interest income, total income up to ₹50 lakh. No capital gains beyond the small LTCG allowance. No foreign assets. No business.
- ITR-2 — salary plus capital gains, or more than two properties, or income above ₹50 lakh, or any foreign asset. This is the default for most Bangalore techies with RSUs.
- ITR-3 — business or professional income, F&O, partner in a firm.
- ITR-4 (Sugam) — presumptive taxation under 44AD/44ADA/44AE, income up to ₹50 lakh. Simple, but no foreign assets allowed.
Pick wrong and your return can be treated as defective under Section 139(9), which starts a whole clock you don’t want.
Old regime or new regime?
The new regime is the default now. You have to actively opt out.
Under it, salaried folks get a ₹75,000 standard deduction, and the Section 87A rebate of up to ₹60,000 means taxable income up to ₹12 lakh is effectively tax-free — ₹12.75 lakh once you account for the standard deduction. That rebate covers normal-rate income only, though. Capital gains under 111A/112A don’t get it.
So when does the old regime still win? When you’ve got a real home loan running, serious HRA in a city like this one, 80C actually maxed, plus 80D, plus NPS. Add all that up and for a lot of people in Bangalore paying ₹40,000+ rent with a housing loan on a second property, the old regime still comes out ahead.
There’s no universal answer. Run both. The e-filing portal calculates both side by side and it takes about four minutes.
One trap: if you file a belated return, you lose the right to opt for the old regime for that year. You’re locked into the new one. For someone with heavy deductions, that alone can cost more than the late fee.
You missed 31 July. What now?
Okay. Deep breath. Here’s the actual cost.
Late fee under 234F: ₹1,000 if your total income is up to ₹5 lakh. ₹5,000 if it’s above.
Interest under 234A: 1% per month, or part of a month, on any unpaid tax — running from 1 August. Part of a month counts as a full month, so filing on the 2nd and the 29th costs the same. Which is an argument for filing this week rather than next month.
What you lose: the ability to carry forward capital losses and business losses. House property loss survives; the others don’t. If you took a hit on stocks this year and were planning to set it off next year, filing late kills that. And as mentioned, you’re stuck in the new regime.
What you don’t lose: your refund. If you’re owed money, it still comes. Late filing doesn’t forfeit a refund.
Belated return window closes 31 December 2026. After that it’s ITR-U territory, which is more expensive and more limited.
File it. Today if possible. The interest clock is monthly, not daily, so there’s no partial credit for waiting.
Doing it yourself vs. getting a CA in Bangalore
Honest take, and I’m not going to pretend everyone needs professional help.
Do it yourself if: one Form 16, no foreign assets, no capital gains beyond a couple of mutual fund redemptions, no side income. The portal is genuinely decent now, most of it is pre-filled, and you’ll be done in twenty minutes.
Get help if: you have RSUs or ESOPs, you switched jobs, you have freelance or business income, you sold property, you traded F&O, you’re an NRI or recently returned, you got a notice last year, or your AIS shows transactions you can’t identify.
That last one is underrated. When AIS and your own records disagree, sorting it out takes experience, not effort.
What does ITR filing cost in Bangalore?
Ballpark, and it swings a lot depending on who you go to and how messy your year was:
- Simple salaried return: roughly ₹1,000–₹2,500
- Salary plus capital gains and RSU/Schedule FA work: usually ₹3,500–₹8,000
- Freelance or business income, presumptive: ₹4,000–₹10,000
- Audit cases: five figures, and it depends entirely on turnover and books
Anyone charging ₹399 for an “RSU + capital gains” return is running software, not applying judgment. Sometimes that’s fine. When you’ve got foreign assets and a ₹10 lakh penalty exposure, it isn’t.
How to pick one, actually
Ask three things. Does this person handle Schedule FA regularly, or is it their first one? Will they respond in December if a notice shows up, or does the relationship end when the acknowledgment comes through? And will they hand you a computation sheet showing how they got to your number — or just an ITR-V?
The good ones answer all three without hesitating. The rest get vague around the second question.
Documents to keep ready
Not a long list, but a specific one:
- Form 16 from every employer this year — plural matters
- Form 26AS and your full AIS/TIS download from the portal
- Capital gains statement from your broker, plus mutual fund CAS
- Foreign brokerage year-end statement if you hold RSUs, with values converted at SBI TT buying rates
- Rent receipts and landlord PAN, interest certificate if you’ve got a home loan
- Bank interest certificates — savings account interest is reportable even if it falls under 80TTA
And once you file: e-verify within 30 days. An unverified return is treated as never filed. Every year some people find this out in October.
FAQs
What is the last date for ITR filing in 2026?
For FY 2025-26 (AY 2026-27), salaried taxpayers filing ITR-1 or ITR-2 had until 31 July 2026. Freelancers, professionals and small businesses filing ITR-3 or ITR-4 without audit have until 31 August 2026. Tax audit cases file by 31 October 2026. Belated returns are accepted until 31 December 2026.
Do I need to declare my RSUs in my ITR if tax was already deducted?
Yes. TDS on RSU vesting covers the income. Schedule FA covers the asset. They’re separate obligations, and both are mandatory for a Resident and Ordinarily Resident. Non-disclosure carries a ₹10 lakh penalty per asset per year under the Black Money Act, even when the income was correctly reported.
Can I still file my ITR after the deadline in Bangalore?
Yes — a belated return under Section 139(4) is open until 31 December 2026. You’ll pay a late fee of ₹1,000 or ₹5,000 under Section 234F depending on income, plus 1% monthly interest under 234A on unpaid tax. You also lose loss carry-forward and can’t opt for the old tax regime.
Which ITR form should a freelancer in Bangalore file?
ITR-4 if you’re using presumptive taxation under Section 44ADA with gross receipts up to ₹75 lakh and no foreign assets. ITR-3 if you maintain regular books, trade F&O, or hold any foreign asset. Both carry the 31 August deadline for non-audit cases.
Is ITR filing mandatory if my income is below the exemption limit?
Not always mandatory, but usually worth doing. You need it to claim a TDS refund, and it’s the document banks, visa offices and landlords ask for. Filing is also mandatory regardless of income in some cases — including holding foreign assets, high-value deposits, or large foreign travel spend.
How much does a CA charge for ITR filing in Bangalore?
Simple salaried returns typically run ₹1,000–₹2,500. Returns with capital gains and Schedule FA disclosure usually fall between ₹3,500 and ₹8,000. Business and audit cases cost more, based on turnover and record-keeping. Complexity drives the number far more than location does.
One last thing
Most tax notices in this city aren’t about fraud. They’re about mismatch. Someone added two Form 16s, or forgot a brokerage account they haven’t logged into since 2023, or assumed TDS deducted meant nothing left to report.
Get your AIS. Read it line by line. Reconcile it against what you actually know happened.
That single habit prevents about eighty percent of the problems people bring to us in December.
Reviewed by [MP Ayippa], [Membership No. ICAI 102132] [Sk Sharma] is a practising Chartered Accountant based in Malleswaram, Bangalore, with 15 years of experience in individual and small business taxation. He handles ESOP and RSU disclosures, capital gains computation, and departmental representation for salaried professionals and founders across Bengaluru. 🔗 LinkedIn · 📧 email · 📍 Bangalore, 560063