Tax filing service providers do brisk  biz  amid glitches  in  I-T site

 








Taxpayer service providers are seeing brisk business this season, as glitches in the government’s electronic tax filing portal prompt many to seek their services.

HostBooks Ltd, a company that supports small businesses and professionals, said that there is a 30-40% jump in new customers from a year ago.

Its founder-chairman, Kapil Rana, said that the company launched a simpler and more convenient format for filing I-T return forms one to four (ITR 1-4) in April, allowing automatic calculations wherever possible to make things easier for users.

Fintech firm Clear (formerly Cleartax) said it is witnessing a sharp increase in the number of assessees getting their tax filing done through chartered accountants and tax experts this year.

The increase in tax filings through professionals in the company’s platform Taxcloud, meant for tax consultants and chartered accountants for filing their clients’ income tax returns, is three times this year from the year-ago period.

The company said there is also a 45% increase in chartered accountant and tax expert sign-ups this year.

It has tax professionals from 623 districts on its platform.

“Tax experts have completely changed their work tools due to covid-19. Chartered accountancy firms were perceived as non-tech-savvy dinosaurs by many. That is just not true. Chartered accountants are voting for cloud-based technology across India," said Archit Gupta, founder and chief executive officer of Clear.

He said Chartered accountants are using the company’s cloud platform to collaborate with clients and employees who work remotely, especially from their hometowns.

Many people choose taxpayer service providers to quickly assess which personal tax regime is most attractive for them, using the facilities they offer.

The Finance Act 2020 had introduced a new alternative regime with a lower tax rate without the benefit of tax deductions to individuals.


This gives the flexibility to individuals to choose between the two regimes depending on whether they are in a position to make use of investment incentives and deductions.

Emails sent to the finance ministry and the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) seeking comments for the story remained unanswered at the time of publishing.

CBDT said that several glitches on the e-filing portal of the income tax department had been resolved, and the portal’s performance has substantially stabilized.

The portal has received more than 20 million income tax returns as of 13 October, CBDT said.

The new tax filing portal—www.incometax.gov.in—launched on 7 June embarrassed the government after glitches and difficulties in its functioning.

The finance ministry asked the leadership of the project developer, Infosys Ltd, to ensure that the portal does not let down taxpayers in service quality.

Once fully streamlined, the tax portal could be a game-changer in offering taxpayers an enhanced and intuitive user experience.

It was developed on mission mode as part of the administration’s e-governance plan.


Download our App to get knowledge updates: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.app.gstmitra

Join Our Telegram Channel for more updates:https://t.me/praveengst








Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Centre appeals against ruling on levy of GST on maintenance charges to resident welfare associations

Image
  The Centre has preferred a writ appeal before the Madras High Court against a single judge's order that flat or villa owners paying more than ₹7,500 a month towards maintenance charges to their residents’ welfare associations must pay Goods and Services Tax (GST) at the rate of 18% only for the amount exceeding ₹7,500 and not for the entire monthly contribution. Justices T.S. Sivagnanam and Sathi Kumar Sukumara Kurup on Wednesday allowed an application filed by the Centre to dispense with production of a certified copy of the judgment passed by Justice Anita Sumanth recently and directed the Registry to list the appeal for admission in the usual course. Justice Sumanth had in July this year quashed an order passed by the Authority for Advance Ruling (AAR) on June 21, 2019 as well as a consequent circular issued by the Department of Revenue under the Union Finance Ministry on July 22, 2019 since both of them had insisted upon collecting GST for entire monthly contribution. The jud...
Read more

Seven key things to know before filing income tax return (ITR) for FY21

Image
  The last date to file income tax return for the financial year 2020-21 has been extended to September 30, 2021. Although there is more than two months left for the deadline to end, it is always recommended to complete the task as soon as possible and not to wait for the last minute. Worth mentioning here is that the income tax department last month launched a new e-filing portal (www.incometax.gov.in) to speed up the processing of tax returns. The I-T department will soon launch a mobile application, having all the features of the new portal. This year taxpayers have to take care of the following changes in the ITR filing process. 1) A new utility named JSON has been launched for filing tax return forms for FY21. At present, only three forms, ITR 1, 2 and 4 have been released. These new forms will import pre-fill data such as personal details, salary income, dividend income, interest income, capital gains and all the information available in Form 26AS. 2) Taxpayers will have the ...
Read more

Income Tax Dept detects ₹350 cr unaccounted cash receipts after raid in Rajkot

Image
  The Income Tax Department carried out a search and seizure operation on a real estate group based in Gujarat's Rajkot and found unaccounted cash receipts in various projects of approximately ₹350 crore, the Finance Ministry said on Friday. The group is among Gujarat’s prominent real estate builders and developers and is actively engaged in real estate, construction and land trading businesses in and around Rajkot. More than 40 premises were covered in the search operation. During the course of operation, many incriminating documents and digital evidences were seized indicating involvement of the group in unaccounted transactions. The IT sleuths found substantial evidence of transactions outside the regular books of accounts, unaccounted cash expenses, cash advances received and interest paid in cash. Evidence of on-money payments in real estate projects-flats, shops and land deals has also been found. Total unaccounted cash receipts in various projects of approximately ₹350 crore...
Read more