Income Tax Dept Releases ITR-5 Excel Utility on E-Filing Portal for AY 2026-27:

The Income Tax Department has released the Excel Utility for ITR-5 for Assessment Year (AY) 2026-27. Eligible and willing taxpayers can now download the utility available on the Income Tax e-Filing portal and begin preparing their income tax returns (ITRs) for the Financial Year (FY) 2025-26.

ITR-5 is an income tax return (ITR) form designed for non-individual taxpayers. The form is required to be filed by Firms, Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs), Associations of Persons (AOPs), Bodies of Individuals (BOIs), and Artificial Juridical Persons (AJPs).

According to the Income Tax Department, the Excel-based Utility (Version 1.0) was released on July 7, 2026. On the same date, the Department also made available the JSON Schema and Validation files required for filing the return through the offline utility.

The Income Tax Department has advised users to use a genuine licensed version of Microsoft Excel 2016 or later with macros enabled, as the utility is designed to work only on supported versions of Microsoft Excel.

Taxpayers can download the ITR-5 Excel Utility, along with the related schema and validation files, from the Downloads section of the Income Tax e-Filing portal. Those who fulfil all criteria to file ITR-5 should use the latest utility to ensure accurate preparation and filing of their income tax returns (ITR) for AY 2026-27.