Hi, May be this is a bit old issue, but I just saw it now, that the e-filing of income tax returns is all about filling things in MS-Excel. The site offers .xls files[1] with macros and all that, which has the specified forms of filing the data in MS-Excel. and uploading it.
The ideal way to respond would be with the .ods files with all those things as in .xls . Now the .xls files are opening correctly on openoffice and hopefully it should be ok to convert it to .ods. But it would be great if some one familiar with the tax forms can check and make sure .ods too works fine. The site offers the schema too[2]. Even if we could convert those to .ods successfully, the government should be ready to accept the .ods files too. I haven't yet checked the whole process of efiling.
Has this been on discussion before? the site is offering "Excel Utility" and "Pdf Utility" even for the Assessment year 2007-2008. Also i heard the last date for this year 09-10 is july end or so.. pretty late it seems.
Moreover i see the "Pdf Utility" given there(for eg:[3]) is even un-viewable on all the pdf viewers i have. As i open it says to use a later version of adobe pdf viewer.
Hope to know more about anything that can be done.
Regards Shyam K
[1]-- https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal/individual_huf.do [2]-- https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal/advanced_users.do [3]-- https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal/downloads07-08/itr/ITR2_Version1...