Tax Consultant
366 Points
Posted on 11 May 2026
The most common cause of this specific failure is an ESOP schedule left in the utility even when there is no ESOP income. Remove the schedule entirely, not just blank it out, and re-validate before uploading. If that does not fix it, download the latest offline utility released after April 10 (CBDT issued a corrigendum that date) and start fresh with the new version.
Switching to the online filing mode on the portal directly also bypasses most utility-side validation bugs if you are in a hurry.