The ITR draft and the direct-filing roadmap
Download a draft Schedule HP, TDS and Part B-TI pre-fill in the e-Filing portal's key names, read its validation report and the fields the CA must confirm, and understand why Property360 calls it a draft rather than a filing file.
Overview
Under the CA package on Income & Tax Reports → CA package sits the ITR draft panel. It builds, for the chosen taxpayer and year, a JSON pre-fill of the parts of the return Property360 can state from reconciled records — Schedule HP (one block per let-out property with annual value, local taxes, the 30% deduction, interest, income and the tenants), Schedule TDS2 / TDS3 (TDS by deductor, by TAN or PAN) and the Part B-TI input income from house property — using the key names of the e-Filing portal's JSON for that assessment year and form (ITR-2, or ITR-1 when the previous year was filed on ITR-1 and there is one property).
Every draft carries the label "Draft prepared by Property360 from reconciled records — not a verified portal-compatible filing file", and the panel shows:
- Validation report — mandatory keys, value types, totals and cross-schedule arithmetic (for example that Part B-TI's income from house property equals the Schedule HP total, or that TDS claimed never exceeds TDS deducted).
- Fields the CA must confirm — what Property360 cannot know: interest on a housing loan, unrealised rent and arrears, the state code of a property, the share of a co-owned property when the lease names a different recipient, TDS figures taken from the invoices because no AIS / Form 26AS line confirms them, and everything outside house property.
- Where the values come from — a count per source (filed ITR, Form 26AS, AIS, prefill, the books, the property and tenant records, computed, assumed).
- A coverage line saying how many of the known keys were verified against a real return of that year imported into your installation.
Before you start
- Same access as the CA package: the taxpayer, the landlord who manages the profile, the related landlords they authorised, the named CA and a master admin.
- The draft reads the rent attributed to the profile for the year (the books), the property records (address, city, pincode, ownership share), the tenants' PAN / TAN and the TDS lines already imported (Form 26AS, AIS, prefill). Fill those in first: a tenant without a PAN or TAN, a property without a pincode or a missing Form 26AS each become a "must confirm" item.
- The assessment years with verified key names are AY 2024-25, AY 2025-26 and AY 2026-27 (and older years for reading); a draft for another year says which keys it had no real file for.
- Every draft generation is recorded in History & Audit as INCOME_TAX_ITR_DRAFT_GENERATED.
Steps
- Open Income & Tax Reports → CA package, pick the Taxpayer and the Year and scroll to ITR draft.
- Read the four tiles — form, validation, must-confirm count, fields drafted — and the Validation report. An ERROR is arithmetic or a missing mandatory key that the CA will have to fix; a WARNING is a cross-check worth a look (a deductor that is not among the tenants, TDS deducted on more rent than the annual value); a note is informational.
- Go through Fields the CA must confirm — MUST items are values Property360 could not derive at all; CHECK items are values it derived but cannot vouch for.
- Click Download JSON. The file holds the draft, the provenance of every field, the must-confirm list, the validation report and the label; name it after the taxpayer and the assessment year.
- Send it to the CA with the CA package; after the records change (a receipt matched, a tenant's TAN added), click the refresh button to rebuild.
Example
Kaveri's draft for AY 2026-27 is an ITR-2 with two properties. The flat is let at ₹12,00,000 with ₹36,000 property tax paid: annual value ₹12,00,000, balance ₹11,64,000, 30% ₹3,49,200, income ₹8,14,800, the tenant listed by TAN with the ₹1,20,000 TDS taken from Form 26AS. The shop she co-owns 50% is let at ₹3,00,000 for the whole property, of which her share is ₹1,50,000 — the draft shows the whole annual value with her 50% share, and lists co-owner share and the individual tenant's TDS (taken from the invoices, no Form 26AS line) under must confirm. The validation report passes; the CA confirms the state code and the absent housing-loan interest, then prepares the return.
What direct filing would take
Filing from Property360 is not on the roadmap for release; a phased plan is documented for the product owner in the repository (docs/direct-filing-roadmap.md): verify drafts against the official utility and the published schema for each year; register as (or integrate with) an e-Return Intermediary; a separate, versioned consent for filing; a prepare → validate → CA review → explicit approval by the assessee → submit → acknowledgement / e-verify workflow with every state audited; and one feature flag per phase, all off by default. Nothing is filed automatically — not from the assistant, not on a schedule.
FAQs
Can I upload this JSON to the e-Filing portal?
Not as it is. The portal expects a complete return in its exact schema, and this draft has not been validated against that schema. Give it to the CA as the house-property and TDS worksheet.
Why is the form ITR-2 and not ITR-1?
An HUF, more than one property, or no ITR-1 filed last year means ITR-2 — the first note under the tiles says which. Add form=ITR-1 to the download link only when the CA asks for the Sahaj layout.
Where do the TDS figures come from?
From Form 26AS, AIS or the portal prefill when a line with the tenant's TAN or PAN was imported for the year; otherwise from the TDS on the invoices, in which case the line is flagged for confirmation.
Troubleshooting
"No property with rent attributed to this taxpayer in the year"
The books attribute no lease to the profile for that year. Check Rent received by on the leases, the deposit-account links and the ownership split under Taxpayer profiles and HUFs.
A validation ERROR on a total
The draft's own arithmetic is consistent; an error appears when a figure was edited or when a source line is inconsistent (TDS claimed above TDS deducted in a prefill). Rebuild the draft; if the error persists, the CA corrects the source figure.
The must-confirm list mentions a TDSSection key
From AY 2025-26 the portal's JSON carries a section code on each TDS line whose encoding Property360 has never read, so the draft leaves it for the CA.