India, June 24 -- The Income Tax Department of India has offered an Excel-based offline utility for filing Income Tax Return-1 (Sahaj) and Income Tax Return-4 (Sugam) for the assessment year 2025-26, i.e the financial year 2024-25.

Under this newly introduced utility, employees, pensioners, freelancers, and small business owners will be able to validate their returns by creating a JSON file, uploading to the e-filing portal, and hence, prepare their income tax returns, even without internet access.

According to the official website, this year, the deadline for filing ITR has seen an extension till Sept 15, for non-audit cases-including ITR-1 and ITR-4 filers. Put across by Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), this replaced the earlier ...