ITR Offline JSON Utility not showing saved drafts

Hi Sri77,

You're not alone—many users of the Income Tax Department's Offline JSON Utility for ITR filing have reported similar issues with saved drafts disappearing from the “Draft Version of Returns” tab unless they restart the system.

The utility temporarily caches data in local app files, and sometimes:

• It fails to reload the draft list due to file permission or memory-related issues.

• Java (on which the utility runs) might not be properly releasing or refreshing resources on exit.

• System services or antivirus/firewall may interfere with reading/writing cache or temp files.

@ Asha Kanta Sharma

@ Sri77

The Offline Utility for AY2025-26 is not Java based.

It uses Microsoft Edge Webview and can only work in Microsoft Windows 10 or 11, 64Bit.

I do not have a clue, where the data is saved while the ITR is still in draft form.

IT Department or Infosys have not given any guidelines or help about this utility. What I wrote is based on many days and hours spent trying to file ITR-2 for someone.

Thanks for the replies. @ Ranjan, your input on the tool using Webview2 was very useful.

After repairing Microsoft Webview2 through Control Panel -> Apps, the drafts now show up without having to restart the computer.

In case you don't see Microsoft Webview2 in the Apps list, some registry editing needs to be done. Then it shows up (same happened to me). 

However, after sometime it stopped working again. Drafts go missing. Definitely some conflict with the software installed.