The release is part of the department’s phased rollout of return filing utilities for the current assessment year. With the ITR-5 Excel utility now live, more categories of taxpayers can begin filing their returns.
Who can file ITR-5?ITR-5 is meant for entities such as:
- Partnership firms
- Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs)
- Associations of Persons (AOPs)
- Bodies of Individuals (BOIs)
- Artificial Juridical Persons (AJPs)
- Local authorities
- Representative assessees covered under Section 160(1)(iii) or (iv)
- Cooperative societies
- Societies registered under the Societies Registration Act, 1860 or corresponding state laws
- Trusts that are not required to file ITR-7
- Estates of deceased and insolvent persons
- Business trusts covered under the applicable provisions of the Income-tax Act
Part of phased rollout
The department has been releasing return filing utilities in phases for AY 2026-27.
The Excel utilities for ITR-1 and ITR-4 were made available on May 15, while online filing for ITR-2 was enabled on May 27. The online filing facility and Excel utility for ITR-3 were launched on June 19.
With the release of the ITR-5 Excel utility, another major category of taxpayers can now start filing their income tax returns using the e-filing portal.
Eligible taxpayers can download the utility from the Income Tax Department’s e-filing portal, fill in the required details offline and upload the completed return after validation.
