How to Add Previous Years’ Losses to your Income Tax Return on ClearTax

Set Off means using certain losses to reduce the income from other sources in the same assessment year. If some losses cannot be fully utilized in the current year, they can be carried forward to future years for offsetting against income in those years. This is known as Carry Forward. In this article, we've discussed a summary of losses that can be set-off and carry forward and how to add previous years' losses in your Income Tax Return (ITR).

Summary of set-off and carry forward of losses

Note: First, you need to make intra-head loss adjustment before considering inter-head loss adjustment.

Procedure to add previous years’ losses in your IT return for the current assessment year

Step 1: Log in to your account on www.cleartax.in and link you PAN and add the income details. (Refer to this page for more details)

Step 2: Under ‘Tax Saving’ tab > scroll down to ‘Carry Forward of Losses’ section > click on edit details

Step 3: Here, click on ‘Add Previous Year Losses’ to enter the details of brought forward losses. 

Step 4: Select the assessment year (the year in which you had incurred the loss). Then select the loss category from the dropdown menu. Enter the loss amount in negative by prefixing a ‘-’ sign. 

Step 5:  Similarly, you can also add details of unabsorbed depreciation by clicking on ‘Add Previous Year Depreciation Loss’. 

Step 6: Scroll down and click on ‘Edit Dates’ and enter the date on which you had filed your ITR for that year. You can find this date in your previous year's ITR. But if you had filed with Cleartax, we will autofill this for you. Once done, click on ‘Save’.

Then, click on ‘Go to Next’ button placed on the right-hand upper corner of the page and proceed to e-filing.