Filing Your ITR Online, Step by Step: From Login to E-Verification

Here is the whole journey, in the order the portal makes you walk it: log in, pick your form and regime, check the pre-filled figures against your own statements, pay whatever tax is still left, submit — and then verify, because a return that is submitted but not verified is not treated as filed at all. That last step is where good returns go to die. I will come back to it.

This walkthrough is for Assessment Year 2026-27, the return for income earned in FY 2025-26, filed under the Income-tax Act, 1961 on incometax.gov.in. It follows the filing process, step by step on our service page and fills in the screen-level detail. Keep your documents beside you as you go — Form 16, Form 26AS, the AIS and your bank and capital gains statements. If that pile is not ready yet, an hour spent gathering it now saves a notice later.

Step 1: Log in, and sort your access before anything else

Go to incometax.gov.in and log in with your PAN as the user ID. First time here? Register with your PAN, name and date of birth exactly as they appear on the PAN card, and set your contact details — the email and mobile that will receive every OTP and every intimation this season.

Two quiet tasks belong to this step, not to filing day. Pre-validate the bank account you want your refund in, and enable it for EVC. Then check that your PAN and Aadhaar are linked and that the mobile number registered with Aadhaar is the phone in your hand. You will need it within the hour.

Step 2: Start the return and pick the year, the mode and the form

From e-File, open Income Tax Returns and choose File Income Tax Return. Select Assessment Year 2026-27. Then choose how you will prepare the return: online, inside the portal, which suits most individual returns — or the offline utility, where you prepare a JSON file on your computer and upload it, which suits long capital gains schedules and anyone whose internet cannot be trusted for an hour.

Now the form. The portal suggests one from your profile. Treat the suggestion as a starting point, not an answer. ITR-1 is only for resident individuals with total income up to ₹50 lakh from salary or pension, house property and other sources within its limits. Capital gains beyond the small window it allows, foreign assets, more house properties, income above ₹50 lakh — that is ITR-2 territory. Business or professional income takes you to ITR-3, or to ITR-4 if you are declaring presumptive income under Sections 44AD, 44ADA or 44AE. Get this choice wrong and the return can come back as defective under Section 139(9) — curable, but an entirely avoidable detour.

Step 3: Settle the regime question before you type a single figure

The new regime under Section 115BAC is the default regime. If you do nothing, it applies. If the old regime suits you better — heavy Section 80C and 80D claims, a large HRA exemption, home loan interest — you must actively opt out.

How you opt out depends on your income. No business or professional income? You choose inside the return itself, and you can change your mind next year. Business or professional income? You must file Form 10-IEA on the portal, on or before your due date under Section 139(1), and only then file the return claiming the old regime. File the return first and the form afterwards and the choice does not hold for the year. Order matters here. It is unforgiving.

Run the computation both ways on your real numbers before you commit. Ten minutes. Real money.

Step 4: Work through the pre-filled return — and trust none of it blindly

The portal now pre-fills a good part of your return from the Taxpayer Information Summary: salary from your employer's TDS return, interest, dividends, securities transactions. Convenient. Also dangerous, because pre-filled is not the same as correct.

Walk head by head. Salary against Form 16, from every employer. Interest against your bank certificates — savings account interest is the classic miss, taxable in full, reported by your bank whether you remember it or not. Capital gains against your broker's and mutual fund statements, remembering that the AIS shows sale amounts while your cost of acquisition lives in your own records. Then open the tax payments section and confirm every TDS credit against Form 26AS, deductor by deductor.

Where the statements and your return tell different stories, fix the story before you submit, not after the notice. Our guide to fixing an AIS, 26AS and Form 16 mismatch covers who can correct what — some entries only the deductor can repair at source. A mismatch you knowingly file over does not disappear. It waits.

Step 5: Finish the computation and pay what is still due

Claim the deductions your chosen regime actually allows, check the set-off of any losses, and look at the final computation with cold eyes: total tax, TDS and advance tax already paid, and the balance. If tax remains payable, pay it now, before you submit — through e-Pay Tax on the portal, by net banking, debit card, UPI or an offline challan at the bank. Wait for the challan details to reach Form 26AS, and enter the BSR code and challan serial number in the return exactly as they appear.

Interest is part of this step, not an afterthought. Section 234A charges 1% per month on tax left unpaid after your due date. Sections 234B and 234C charge for advance tax that was short or late during the year itself. The utility computes these. Your job is to check the computation makes sense, not to argue with it.

Step 6: Validate, submit, and save the acknowledgement

Run the portal's validation and read every warning it throws up. Warnings are not decoration — a bank account left unvalidated or a schedule left inconsistent is next month's defective notice. When the return validates clean, submit it. The portal issues an acknowledgement number and generates your ITR-V, the one-page acknowledgement. Download both the ITR-V and the full return copy, and keep them with the year's papers.

But do not close the tab in triumph. Not yet.

Step 7: E-verify within 30 days — the step that decides whether you filed at all

Think of e-verification as your signature at the bottom of the return. An unsigned form handed across a counter is paper, not a filing. The portal works the same way: submission puts the paper on the desk, verification signs it, and only the signed return counts.

Under Notification No. 2 of 2024 dated 31 March 2024, you have 30 days from uploading to verify. Verify inside those 30 days and your upload date is your filing date. Verify late and the verification date becomes your filing date, with every consequence of late filing that follows. Never verify, and the return is treated as invalid — as if it was never furnished. Refund, loss carry-forward, proof of filing for a loan or a visa: all of it rests on this one step.

My advice is blunt: verify in the same sitting, with Aadhaar OTP, while the acknowledgement is still on your screen. The success message and transaction ID are your proof. Screenshot them. Save them.

After submission: the dates that still belong to you

For AY 2026-27, the Section 139(1) due dates are staggered this year: 31 July 2026 for most individuals and other non-audit cases, 31 August 2026 where you have business or professional income and no audit applies, 21 November 2026 for audit cases after the extension in CBDT Circular No. 07/2026, and 30 November 2026 for transfer pricing cases under Section 92E.

Miss your date and a belated return under Section 139(4) stays open until 31 December 2026, with the Section 234F fee — ₹5,000, or ₹1,000 where your total income does not exceed ₹5 lakh — plus interest, and our guide to belated ITR filing and the Section 234F penalty works through what a late return can still do. Spot an error in a return already filed, even a belated one? A revised return under Section 139(5) now runs until 31 March 2027; revisions filed after 31 December 2026 carry the new Section 234-I fee of ₹1,000 or ₹5,000 on the same income test. And if the department instead finds a defect and writes to you, that is a different door — our note on the defective return notice under Section 139(9) explains its fifteen days. Do not answer a defect notice with a revised return. Different doors, different keys.

Then the return goes to CPC for processing under Section 143(1). Track it from your portal account — return status, intimation, refund status. Keep the intimation when it comes. That email, not your memory of filing day, is the year's closing document.

If the walkthrough above reads like an evening you would rather spend elsewhere, hand it over: our income tax return filing team reconciles your statements, computes both regimes, files on the correct form and e-verifies inside the same engagement — so your return is not just submitted, it is finished.