New Delhi. The Income Tax Department has made major changes in ITR-3 and ITR-4 forms. Five new professional codes are now added to these forms. These include social media and YouTube-earning (content creator, influencers, utiubers), futures and options (F&O) traders (share/commodity markets), commission agents, speculative business and share buyers.

What does it mean?
Now these professionals will have to give full details of their income. They have to fill the correct form (ITR-3 or ITR-4) according to their work. These new codes have already been added to the offline and online methods of filling the form.

Rules for Social Media Influencers:
A new code 16021 has been created for these. This code is for those who earn on social media by making promotion, advertising or digital content. Influencers will have to fill one of the ITR-3 or ITR-4 (Sugam) form on the basis of their income level and tax election. If an influencer wants to take advantage of tax on estimated income (section 44ADA), he will have to fill ITR-4. This will increase transparency in paying taxes of digital earners like online coaches, bloggers.

Rules for stock market traders
The new code 21010 has been added for F&O traders. These traders will have to give full details of their income, profit and loss in ITR-3 form. This will reveal their real earnings to the department and will improve tax collection.

Why were these changes made?
1. Ease of identity: Earlier many influencers or traders used to pay taxes in ‘other’ category. It was difficult for the department to know what work they were earning. Different codes will eliminate this problem.
2. Stopping wrong information: Some people tried to save tax by choosing wrong category or hiding information. It will be difficult to do this with a separate code.
3. Monitoring easy: It will be easy for the department to keep an eye on these high -earned professionals.
4. Rapid growing area: In the last 2 years, the number of people earning more than 20 lakh rupees from social media has increased rapidly. Some are earned by Rs 2-5 crore or more and some have reached Rs 100 crore. It was necessary to bring such people under tax.

List of new code
Code profession / business
09029 Commission agent
16021 Social Media Influencer
21009 speculative business
21010 futures-class trader (F&O)
21011 shares procurement and sales