How ITR Filer works, and what it never sees

The pre-filled JSON you download from incometax.gov.in holds your PAN, Aadhaar number, address, bank accounts, salary and TDS. ITR Filer opens it in your browser, and that is where it stays. Reading the file, importing your Form 16, computing your tax and producing the return are all code that runs on your device.

No tax figure is ever sent to us: not in a request, a log, an analytics event or a database row. There are no analytics on this site at all. A return you are working on is kept in your browser’s own storage, on your device, with a button to delete it. If you clear your browser’s data, it is gone, and we cannot recover it, because we never had it.

Signing in with Google creates an account. The database holds, for each person:

Your Google account ID

The number Google gives your account. It is how we find you.

Your name and email address

As Google gave them at your last sign-in.

When you joined and last signed in

Two timestamps.

A sign-in record for each browser

A scrambled copy (SHA-256 hash) of the token in your cookie, which lapses after 30 days.

That is the whole list. The web server also keeps the ordinary request log every website keeps: the page asked for, the time, your IP address and your browser’s name. Deleting your account on the account page removes your rows at once. The privacy notice says the same thing in the words the law asks for.

You do not have to take our word for it. Your browser lists every request a page makes.

1. Open the browser's developer tools: press F12, or Ctrl+Shift+I (Cmd+Option+I on a Mac), and choose the Network tab.
2. Sign in, start a return and open your pre-filled file. Fill in a few figures.
3. Read the list. Every request is for a page or a script of this site. Click any of them: none carries your PAN, your income or a single tax figure.
4. Tick "Preserve log", download your return, and look again. The file is made on your device, and nothing is uploaded.

The regime calculator is the quickest place to try it: once the page has loaded, it makes no request at all, whatever you type.

ITR Filer makes the return as a JSON file in the format the department publishes for each form. You download it, sign in to incometax.gov.in yourself, and upload it under e-File, Income Tax Returns, File Income Tax Return, in offline mode. Then you e-verify it, usually with an OTP to the mobile linked with your Aadhaar.

We never ask for your income-tax portal password, never sign in to the portal for you, and never automate it. Nothing is filed on your behalf, so there is no OTP to hand over and no copy of your return anywhere but on your device and with the department.

Every return file names the software that made it, in a field called CreationInfo, with an ID the Income Tax Department issues to a registered maker of offline filing software (a “Type 3 e-Return Intermediary”). That registration covers only the software; it does not let us see or file your return.

Our registration is in progress. Until the department allots our ID, files made here are for testing and must not be uploaded for a real return; the review step says so on every file.

ITR-1, ITR-2 and ITR-4 for individuals resident in India, on income from 1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026. It starts from your pre-filled JSON, reads your Form 16 and broker statements in the browser, works out both tax regimes with every line shown, and checks the file against the department’s schema before you download it.

It does not do ITR-3 (business income with books, or futures and options), returns for non-residents, HUFs or firms. Where it cannot handle a return, it says so up front rather than making a file that will bounce.

One price per return, per year, including GST. No expert plans, no upsells.

You pay only when you download a paid return. Preparing it and seeing every number is free.