The return is not the tax

A statement, not a payment

Almost every misunderstanding on this page comes from treating the return as the tax. They are different things with different purposes, and separating them resolves most of the confusion in a sentence.

The tax is money. It is deducted from your salary, collected at source, or paid by you. It can be fully paid and still leave something undone.

The return is your declaration. It says: this was my income, from these sources, this is what was deducted or paid against it, and this is therefore the position. It is a statement to an authority, and the authority's interest in receiving it is independent of whether any money changes hands as a result.

So the sentence "my tax is already deducted, I don't need to file" contains a true clause and a false conclusion. Three consequences follow, and the next three sections are each one of them:

1. Filing can be required even where nothing is payable.
2. Some things can only be obtained by having filed.
3. A year with no statement in it stays open.

Who must file anyway

The list that catches people, because every item on it is somebody who was confident they were outside the system.

Broadly, filing is required irrespective of whether tax is payable where, during the year, a person:

• Spent above a specified level on foreign travel, for themselves or anybody else.
• Spent above a specified level on electricity.
• Deposited above a specified level in one or more bank accounts, current accounts in particular.
• Holds any asset outside India, or has an interest in one, or is a signing authority on an account outside India — and this one has consequences of its own well beyond the filing requirement.
• Had turnover or receipts above a specified level from a business or profession, even at a loss.
• Had tax deducted or collected above a specified level against their number.
• Is a company, firm or certain other entity, which must file regardless of income or loss.
• Had income above the basic threshold before claiming exemptions and deductions — which is the one people miss most, because they compute after deductions and conclude they are below the line.

We are not printing the levels, deliberately. They sit in provisions that have been amended and a stale figure here is how somebody concludes confidently that they are outside a requirement they are inside. Check the current position for your year.

What you cannot have without it

Separate from the requirement, there is a list of things that are simply unavailable to somebody who did not file. This is the practical argument that persuades people who are unmoved by the obligation.

• A refund. If more was deducted than was due, the only route to getting it back is a return. No return, no refund, however much was over-deducted.
• Carrying a loss forward. For most categories the right depends on having filed, and on having filed on time. Dealt with in its own section.
• Returns for a loan. Lenders routinely ask for two or three years. Nobody can produce retrospectively a return they never filed, and a hurried updated return filed in a week does not read the same as three years of timely filings.
• Returns for a visa. Several consulates ask for them, and this is the single commonest reason somebody suddenly needs three years closed urgently.
• Tender and empanelment eligibility. Frequently specified as returns for a stated number of years.
• Proof of income for any purpose where a self-declaration will not do — and where an authority wants a government-issued statement instead, that is a different document, which our income certificate service covers.
• A clean position when something is examined. A filed year is a closed year with your own figures in it. An unfiled one has only somebody else's.

The years that stay open

The most important idea on this page, and it runs against how people experience the whole thing.

Not filing feels like inaction. Nothing was submitted, nothing was claimed, nothing happened. In fact something very specific happened: a year was left unclosed.

Think about what sits in an unfiled year. Your employer reported your salary and the tax deducted. Your bank reported interest. An institution reported a mutual fund transaction. A registrar reported a property dealing. A platform reported a collection. All of that is in the year. What is not in the year is your statement about it.

So the choice people think they are making — file, or do nothing — is not the choice. It is: close this year, or leave it open. And an open year does not get better with age. The windows available for it narrow, the interest accrues, and the number of years sitting open grows.

The refund is not the point

Here is the habit worth breaking, and it is extremely common: filing in the years where a refund is expected and skipping the years where nothing is coming back.

It is understandable. The refund is the visible benefit, filing takes an afternoon, and in a year where you owe nothing and get nothing there seems to be no reason. But read that against the previous section and the logic inverts.

• The refund year closes itself anyway, because you filed for the refund. It was never the year at risk.
• The year you skipped is the open one. The year with nothing at stake is precisely the year you left unclosed.
• The pattern is visible. A filing history with gaps in exactly the years where no refund was due is a pattern, and it is a pattern that invites the question.
• The loss year is the worst one to skip. A year in which you made a loss is the year where filing, on time, is most valuable — and it is the year with the least immediate reward, so it is the one people skip.

No longer form-filling

The structural change that most guidance has not absorbed, and the reason this page spends more words on reading than on filling.

It used to be that you assembled your own figures, wrote them into a form, and the department largely took your word unless something prompted a look. That is no longer how it works. A great deal is reported about you, by other people, before you file anything:

• Your employer reports your salary and the tax deducted from it.
• Banks report interest paid to you.
• Institutions report dividends, mutual fund transactions and securities dealings.
• Anybody who deducted or collected tax against your number reports it.
• Registrars report property transactions.
• Certain high-value transactions and deposits are reported.
• Platforms and payment systems report collections in some cases.

All of which is collected against your permanent account number and presented back to you, and used to pre-fill parts of the return. Which produces the practical point:

Read your own statements first

The single highest-value habit in this entire subject, and it costs an evening once a year.

Before you file anything, log in to the portal and read the information the department has about you. Not after a notice. Before.

What this achieves:

• You see what you are being compared against. Which means no surprises.
• You find the interest you forgot. The savings account, the old fixed deposit, the small bond — all reported, all easy to omit honestly.
• You find what is not yours, in time to say so rather than to explain it.
• You find missing credit. Tax deducted against the wrong number, or not yet filed by a deductor, is a credit you lose unless you notice.
• You find the transaction you forgot you made. This happens more than people admit, particularly with securities.
• You can fix a deductor's error while it is still fixable, by asking them to correct and refile.

If you do one thing differently after reading this page, make it this. Most of the problems in the rest of this guide begin with somebody filing a return without having looked at what was already on the record about them.

What those statements show

Two things to look at, and they do different jobs.

The tax credit statement is the narrower one. It shows tax deducted and collected against your number, by whom, in which period, and whether the deductor has actually filed it. Its purpose is credit: what you can set against your liability. Its characteristic failure is a deductor who deducted but has not filed, so the credit does not appear.

The annual information statement is the wider one. It shows what has been reported about you across categories — salary, interest, dividends, securities transactions, property, deposits, foreign remittances and more — whether or not any tax was deducted on it. Its purpose is completeness. Its characteristic failure is an entry that belongs to somebody else, or a duplicate, or a figure stated on a different basis from yours.

What to do with them, in order:

1. Download both for the year.
2. Tick off every entry you recognise and can account for.
3. Make a list of what is there and is not in your own figures.
4. Make a list of what is in your figures and not there — particularly deducted tax with no credit showing.
5. Deal with each list before filing, not after.

When something is not yours

It happens, and the right response is active rather than silent.

An entry can appear against you because a reporting entity quoted a wrong number, because of a duplicate submission, because a joint holding has been reported wholly to one holder, or because of a straightforward data error.

What to do:

• Use the feedback facility on the statement. There is a mechanism to say that an entry is not yours, is duplicated, relates to another person, or is stated on a different basis. Use it, and keep a record that you did.
• Go to the source as well. The reporting entity — the bank, the broker, the employer — is the one who can correct and refile, and feedback on the statement does not by itself change their filing.
• Do not simply file around it. Filing a return that ignores a reported entry, without having said anything, is how a reconciliation becomes a notice.
• Do not over-declare to be safe either. Declaring income that is not yours because it appeared on a statement is its own problem, and it is harder to unwind than an explained mismatch.
• Where it is a joint holding, declare your share and be able to show the basis of the split.

When the salary record disagrees

Common, usually innocent, and always worth resolving before filing rather than after.

Your salary record from your employer and the reported figures can differ for ordinary reasons:

• A timing difference — a payment made in one period and reported in another.
• An exemption or allowance treated one way by the employer and another way in your own computation.
• A correction the employer has not yet filed, so the reported figure is the old one.
• A reimbursement treated as income in one place and not the other.
• Perquisites valued differently from how you expected.
• Arrears or a bonus relating to an earlier period.

What to do: establish which figure is right, ask the employer to correct and refile where the error is theirs, keep the correspondence either way, and file on the correct figure with the explanation on your file. A difference you can explain in two sentences with a document behind it is a closed point. The same difference unexplained is an open one.

Two employers in one year

A specific case that catches people every single year, and it is pure arithmetic rather than anybody's error.

If you changed jobs during the year, two employers each computed your tax — and each of them, not knowing about the other, gave you the basic exemption and the deductions you declared to them. The result is that across the two, less tax was deducted than was actually due on your combined income for the year.

Which shows up at filing as an amount payable, in a year when you believed everything had been deducted. People experience it as an error. It is not; it is the predictable consequence of two separate computations on one income.

What to do:

• Get the salary record from both employers, including the old one, which gets harder the longer you leave it.
• Add them properly, and compute the tax on the combined figure.
• Expect a payable amount, and budget for it before the due date rather than discovering it on the day.
• Where you can, declare the previous salary to the new employer when you join, so the deduction is correct through the year and there is no lump at the end.
• Check that both employers' deductions appear in your credit statement, because a missing one is a credit you will otherwise lose.

The four choices

Here is the structure of this subject, and once you see it the whole thing becomes manageable. Filing involves four decisions, and each one has a door that closes. Everything else is data entry.

Notice what they have in common. None of them is about how much tax you owe. All of them are about timing and selection, and all four are decided before or at the moment of filing. Which is why a return filed carelessly in twenty minutes on the last day is not merely rushed — it is four decisions taken without being noticed.

Choice one: which return

There is not one return. There is a set of them, and which applies to you is determined by your sources of income and your status — not by how complicated you feel your affairs are.

Broadly, the determinants are:

• Whether you are an individual, and resident or not.
• Whether you have only salary, interest and one house property, or more than that.
• Whether you have capital gains, which takes you out of the simplest return.
• Whether you have business or professional income, and whether you are taxed on a presumptive basis.
• Whether you hold foreign assets or have foreign income, which takes you out of the simplest returns entirely.
• Whether you are a director in a company or hold unlisted shares.
• Whether income above a specified level arises, which excludes some returns.
• Whether you are a firm, company, trust or other entity, each with its own return.

We are not giving form numbers, and the reason is better than caution: which form covers which situation is set afresh each year, and the eligibility conditions are tightened and loosened between years. A page that told you confidently which numbered form to use would be giving advice about a different year.

What to do instead: list your sources of income for the year, honestly and completely, and let that list determine the return. The commonest error is picking last year's form out of habit after acquiring a new source of income during the year — a capital gain, a bit of freelance work, an unlisted shareholding.

The defective return, and its clock

The consequence of getting choice one wrong, and it is quieter and more dangerous than people expect.

A return filed in the wrong form, or incomplete in a specified way, can be treated as defective. What happens then is an intimation saying so, with a period in which to correct it.

Two outcomes:

• You correct it within the period. The return stands, and it is generally treated as having been filed on its original date, which protects everything that depended on the original date.
• You do not. The return can be treated as never having been filed. Which means the year reverts to being open, the original window may well have passed, and anything that depended on timely filing — notably carry-forward of losses — is gone.

Choice two: which regime

Two bases of taxation are available, broadly: one with lower rates and substantially fewer deductions and exemptions, and one with higher rates where the usual deductions and exemptions are claimed.

Which is better for you is arithmetic on your own numbers and nothing else. It is not a matter of principle, it is not the same answer for two people with the same salary, and it changes for the same person between years as their deductions change.

What drives the answer:

• How much you actually claim under the common deduction heads — and the honest figure, not the maximum available.
• Whether you pay rent and claim the related allowance.
• Whether you have housing loan interest, and how much.
• Insurance, retirement contributions, education costs, medical cover.
• Your income level, because the rate structures cross over at a point that depends on your deductions.

We are deliberately printing no rates, no slabs and no break-even figures. All of those have changed and will change, and the only correct answer is the one computed on your numbers under the structure in force for your year.

When the choice locks

The door on choice two, and it is shaped differently for different taxpayers, which is why it is worth being careful about.

What is broadly the position:

• The choice is exercised in relation to the year, in the manner prescribed, and in most cases at or before filing.
• For a salaried person without business income, there is generally more freedom to choose year by year.
• For somebody with business or professional income, the ability to move between regimes is restricted — a switch may be available only once, or may require a prescribed form to be filed within a time, and having switched out, moving back may not be available again.
• The prescribed form, where one applies, has its own deadline, and missing it is how people find themselves taxed under a basis they did not want.
• A late return can affect the choice available, which is another way choice three reaches back into choice two.

If you have business or professional income, do not treat this as a tick box at filing. It is a decision with a lock on it, and it is exactly the sort of question a chartered accountant should answer on your numbers before anything is filed.

Choice three: which window

The most consequential of the four, because it is the one that reaches into the other three.

There are, broadly, three windows, and they are not equivalent:

Which is why "I'll do it later" is a decision rather than a delay. Each step down that table costs something specific, and the cost is not primarily the charge — it is the carry-forward right, which is invisible until the year you needed it.

The belated return, and what it costs

A real and respectable option. Filing late is far better than not filing, and anybody who tells you otherwise is discouraging you from closing a year.

What it costs, honestly:

• A late-filing charge, which is a fixed amount depending on the level of income, and is modest at lower incomes.
• Interest on unpaid tax, running from when it was due.
• The loss of carry-forward for certain losses. This is the expensive one and it is not reversible. Some losses — broadly, business and capital losses — require a timely return; others, such as a house property loss, are generally treated differently.
• Possible effects on the regime choice, depending on your category.

What it does not cost: the refund, which is still available; the ability to revise, within the applicable window; or the closure of the year, which is the main thing.

The later route for an old year

For years where even the belated window has gone, there is a further route by which a return can be furnished or an earlier one updated, within a longer period, on payment of additional tax over and above what was due.

Why it matters: it is the reason an unfiled year from a few years back is usually fixable rather than permanently open. For somebody with three skipped years, this is frequently the mechanism that closes the oldest of them.

What to understand about it:

• It costs more, by design. There is additional tax on top of the tax and interest, and the additional amount is larger the later you come.
• It has conditions. It is not available in every situation, and particularly not where it would reduce a liability or produce or increase a refund, or where certain proceedings are on foot.
• The window and the additional rates have been amended, so the current position for each of your years is a question of fact to check rather than to assume.
• It is a repair mechanism, not a plan. Anybody treating it as a reason not to file on time has misunderstood what it is for and what it costs.

Practical approach for several open years: establish, year by year, which window each one is in. Typically the most recent is belated, the ones before that are in the updating route, and some may be beyond everything — in which case the position is that the year stays open and you deal with it if it is raised.

Choice four: whether to revise

The least used and most forgiving of the four doors.

If you realise after filing that something was wrong — income omitted, a deduction claimed incorrectly, a figure mistyped, a source forgotten — a return can be revised within a window, and the revised return substitutes for the original.

Why this is more important than it looks:

• It is the one mechanism entirely in your hands. You correct your own mistake, on your own initiative, before anybody raises it.
• A voluntarily corrected error is a different thing, in substance and in how it reads, from the same error found by somebody else.
• It is available for a belated return too, within its own window.
• It closes. After the window, your own mistake is no longer yours to fix, and the only remaining route is the more expensive one.

Verification is part of filing

The smallest item on this page and the one that costs whole years, which is why it gets its own section.

A return is not filed until it is verified. Submission is not the end of the process. An unverified return is treated as not having been filed at all, with every consequence that follows from an unfiled year.

What to do:

• Verify on the same day you submit. Electronically, through whichever of the available methods works for you, in the minutes after submitting.
• Do not plan to post a signed copy later unless you genuinely must, and if you do, do it immediately and keep the dispatch proof.
• Check that the verification registered. The portal shows the status; look at it rather than assuming.
• Keep the acknowledgement, which is the document everything afterwards refers to.
• Do not consider the job done until the status says so. "I filed it" and "it is filed" are different statements.

Losses, and why timing decides them

The clearest illustration of why choice three matters in a year where nothing seems to be at stake.

Certain losses can be carried forward and set against income of later years, which is genuinely valuable — a business loss this year reducing tax on a profit three years from now. And for most categories, the right depends on having filed the return on time, not merely on having filed it.

What this means concretely:

• The loss year is the most important year to file on time, and it is the year with the least visible reward — no tax, no refund, nothing happening.
• Skipping it, or filing it late, can cost you in a future profitable year, by an amount far larger than anything the filing itself involved.
• The carried-forward loss has to appear in the return to be carried, and then to be claimed in the later year — so the chain of returns has to be unbroken and consistent.
• Different categories of loss behave differently — a house property loss is generally treated more leniently on timeliness than a business or capital loss — and which is which is worth getting right from somebody competent.
• Keep the computation for every loss year, because you will be relying on it years later when nobody remembers the detail.

If you are reading this in a year where you made a loss and were about to skip filing because there is no tax: that is the year this section is about.

Salary, and what gets missed

The simplest head and still the one with the most quiet omissions, because salary feels fully handled by the employer.

What gets missed:

• The previous employer's salary, where you changed jobs — dealt with earlier and worth repeating.
• Perquisites you did not think of as income — a vehicle, accommodation, a concessional loan, a club membership, stock benefits.
• Arrears and bonuses relating to an earlier period, with their own treatment available in some cases.
• Allowances claimed as exempt without the supporting condition actually being met — rent paid but no agreement or receipts, travel claimed without travel.
• A notice-period recovery or a joining bonus clawback, where the treatment is not obvious.
• Leave encashment and gratuity on leaving, where exemptions apply but with conditions.
• Reimbursements that are not actually reimbursements of anything.

And the one structural point: your employer computed tax on what it knew. Anything it did not know about — other income, another employer, an investment you did not declare to it — was not in that computation and is yours to bring into the return.

Interest nobody declares

The most widely omitted income in the country, almost always innocently, and now entirely visible because banks report it.

• Savings account interest. Small, forgotten, reported. A deduction may be available for part of it, which is different from it not being income.
• Fixed deposit interest, including on deposits you did not touch and interest that was reinvested rather than paid out. Accrued interest is income even where you never saw the money.
• Recurring deposit interest.
• Interest on a post office or small savings instrument.
• Bond and debenture interest.
• Interest on an income tax refund, which is itself income in the year received and which practically nobody declares.
• Interest on a loan you gave somebody, including within the family.

Rent, which is reported by your tenant

Worth its own section because of the asymmetry people do not expect.

If your tenant is salaried and claims a house rent allowance, they will frequently have reported your details to their employer to support it. Which means rent paid to you can be on the record without you having done anything.

What to get right:

• Declare the rent received, on the correct basis for the head.
• Claim the deductions actually available — the standard deduction for the head, municipal taxes actually paid, and interest on a loan for the property.
• Keep the documents — the rent agreement, receipts, the municipal tax challan, the lender's interest certificate.
• A jointly owned property is declared in shares, and the shares should be consistent year to year and consistent with ownership.
• A vacant property and a self-occupied one have their own treatment, which is not the same as a let one.
• A loss under this head is one of the more useful ones available, and it is also treated differently on timeliness from business losses.

Capital gains, where a CA earns the fee

The most frequently queried figure in a return, and the point at which this page stops being adequate.

Why it is hard: the computation depends on the holding period, the actual cost, allowable improvements, the expenses of transfer, indexation where it applies, and any available exemption with its own conditions and timelines. For property there are further questions about the stated consideration and the valuation. For securities there are different treatments by type and holding period.

What you should do:

• Get the computation done by somebody competent — a chartered accountant, not a filing service and not a web page.
• Assemble the documents before you ask: the purchase deed or contract note, the sale deed or statement, proof of improvements, brokerage, and the dates of everything.
• Keep the working permanently, because this is the figure that gets asked about years later.
• Understand that an exemption usually has a deadline — a reinvestment to be made within a period, or a deposit into a specified account before filing. Those are doors too, and they close.
• Do not net gains and losses by instinct. The rules on what can be set against what are specific.

Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it.

Business and professional income

A short orientation rather than a treatment, because this is accounting territory.

If you have business or professional income, the following become live: which return applies, whether books must be maintained, whether an audit requirement is triggered, whether a presumptive basis is available and suits you, how the regime choice locks for you, whether you must deduct tax from your own payments, and whether advance tax was payable through the year.

Two practical points that are documentation rather than advice:

• Separate the money. Business receipts and personal money in one account makes every one of the above harder and more expensive to establish. This is the practical argument for the current account dealt with in our business setup guide.
• Check what was deducted against you. Clients deduct tax on professional payments, and that credit is yours — but only if it was deducted against the right number and actually filed. Read the credit statement.

And where you are registered for indirect tax as well, the two sets of figures should agree: our GST return service covers that side, and a turnover declared one way in one return and another way in the other is a question waiting to be asked.

Presumptive schemes

Available for certain businesses and professions, under which income is computed on a prescribed basis instead of from full accounts.

What they offer: simplicity, no requirement to maintain full books for the purpose, and no audit in the ordinary course.

What to understand before opting in:

• Eligibility is conditional on the nature of the activity and on receipts being within specified levels.
• It is an election with consequences for later years — departing from the scheme after opting in can trigger an audit requirement and can bar you from re-entering for a period.
• The prescribed income may be more than your actual income. That is the trade: simplicity against possibly paying on a deemed figure higher than reality.
• Advance tax still applies, on its own basis.
• Whether it suits you is arithmetic, like the regime choice, and it should be computed both ways rather than adopted because it is easier.

This is a chartered accountant's call on your numbers. We flag it; we do not decide it.

Foreign assets and accounts

A short section with a serious message.

Holding an asset outside India, having an interest in one, or being a signing authority on an account outside India brings reporting obligations of its own, independent of how much income arises and independent of whether any tax is payable. It also takes you out of the simplest returns.

What to know:

• The reporting obligation is about holding, not about earning. A dormant account with a small balance is still a foreign asset.
• Non-disclosure has its own and serious consequence, under a separate law, and it is disproportionate to the amounts frequently involved.
• Employee stock in a foreign parent counts. This catches a very large number of people at technology companies who have never thought of themselves as holding foreign assets.
• Information is exchanged between countries, so an undisclosed foreign account is not an invisible one.
• If this applies to you, get proper advice rather than a filing service. We will say so, and we will not file a return omitting it.

Family income and minors

Brief, because the trap is a single idea.

Income arising from assets transferred to a spouse or to certain other relatives, and income of a minor child, can in specified circumstances be treated as the income of the transferor or the parent rather than of the person who received it. Which means the common arrangement of putting a deposit in a spouse's or child's name does not necessarily move the income for tax purposes.

What this means practically:

• Do not assume a transfer moves the income. Check before relying on it.
• A minor's income is usually included in a parent's return, with a small exemption, except in specified cases such as income from the minor's own skill.
• Reported data is against the holder's number, so a clubbed item may appear in one place and be declared in another — which is an explainable mismatch, if you know to explain it.
• Family arrangements made for tax reasons deserve advice rather than inheritance from a relative's practice.

Deductions, and proof of them

The half of the return that reduces your tax, and the half you must be able to evidence.

What to keep for anything claimed:

• Insurance premium receipts, with the policy details.
• Retirement and provident contributions, including voluntary ones.
• Housing loan statements splitting principal and interest.
• Education loan interest certificates.
• Medical insurance premium receipts, including for parents where claimed.
• Donation receipts in the prescribed form, with the institution's details.
• Rent receipts and the agreement where an allowance is claimed.
• Tuition fee receipts where claimed.
• Any investment made specifically to claim a deduction, with the date, because the date decides the year.

The bank account and the refund

Small, mechanical, and the reason a large share of refunds do not arrive.

• The account must be validated on the portal, not merely entered. Validation can fail silently.
• The name on the account must match the name on the record.
• The account must be active. A closed or dormant account that was validated two years ago is a refund that will fail.
• It should be nominated for the refund, where that selection exists.
• Check it before filing, every year, because banks merge, branches change and account numbers get reissued.

That is five minutes, once a year, and it is the difference between a refund arriving and a refund being a thing you chase.

When a refund is stuck

Work through these in order rather than assuming the worst.

1. Is the return verified? By a wide margin the commonest answer.
2. Is the return processed? Nothing is paid before processing.
3. Is the bank account validated and active? The second commonest answer.
4. Is there an intimation adjusting your figures, which may have reduced or removed the refund? Read it rather than ignoring it.
5. Is an old demand being set off against the refund? This happens, and the old demand may itself be wrong and worth contesting.
6. Is a mismatch under examination? Which takes you to the reconciliation sections above.
7. Is there a notice you have not seen on the portal or at the registered email?

Where a refund has been adjusted against a demand you dispute, or where an intimation has reduced your refund and you believe it is wrong, that is a specific response rather than a complaint — our income tax notice reply service covers it.

Processing, and the intimation

What happens after a return is filed and verified, so that the message you get is not alarming.

The return is processed and an intimation is generated. It compares your figures with the computation made on processing, and arrives in one of three shapes:

• Agreed. No demand, no refund, or a refund as claimed. Keep it; this is your evidence that the year was processed.
• A refund, stated, which then follows the bank-account path above.
• A demand, where the processing computed more tax than you did. This is not an accusation and it is frequently a credit that did not match, an arithmetic difference, or a deduction not allowed as claimed.

What to do with a demand on an intimation: read what it actually recomputed, compare it line by line with your return, and respond within the time stated — agreeing where it is right and disagreeing with the reason where it is not. There is a mechanism for that response, and it exists precisely because processing differences are common and often the department's figure needs correcting rather than yours.

What not to do: pay a demand you have not checked, or ignore one you disagree with. Both are expensive in different directions.

If a notice comes

Kept short deliberately, because this page is about filing and the notice side is its own subject.

If something arrives after filing, the useful discipline is the same whatever it is: identify what is actually being asked, note the date by which to respond, respond on the record within that time, attach the document that settles it, and keep the copy. Most of what arrives is narrow and becomes serious only when ignored.

Our income tax notice reply guide deals with the different kinds of communication, what each one actually means, and how to answer it — including the part people get most wrong, which is treating every letter as an accusation when most are a mismatch.

And the preventive point, which is the whole argument of the first half of this page: the great majority of what that page is about never arrives if you read your own information statements before filing.

What to keep, and for how long

Longer than you think, because a filed year can still be examined and the records are what make that painless.

• The return as filed and the acknowledgement, downloaded rather than left on the portal.
• The computation showing how you got to the figures, especially where a professional prepared it.
• Both information statements for the year, as they stood when you filed.
• Salary records from every employer.
• Interest certificates from every bank and institution.
• Deduction proofs, as listed above.
• Capital gains working, with the purchase and sale documents.
• Bank statements for the year.
• Any intimation, notice or response, with dates.

Keep them digitally as well, named by year, and searchable — because the practical test is whether you can produce a specific interest certificate from three years ago within a week of being asked. Our document digitisation work exists for that problem, and for a household with a few years of returns it pays for itself the first time somebody asks.

Closing several years at once

The specific exercise for somebody with a backlog, set out as a method because it is a method rather than a panic.

1. List the years. Every year in which you were required to file and did not, oldest first.
2. Establish the window for each. Belated, the later updating route, or beyond both. This is the single most important step and it decides everything else.
3. Pull the information statements for each year. They are available, and they tell you what each year contains.
4. Reconstruct the income for each year from those statements plus your own records — bank statements being the backbone where records are thin.
5. Compute the liability for each, with interest and any additional amount for the route being used.
6. File in order, oldest first where carried-forward figures matter, so that the chain is consistent.
7. Verify each one the same day.
8. Keep the whole set together, because a bank or a consulate will ask for all of them as a run.

Things people get wrong

A short list of the recurring ones, each of which has a section above.

• Believing that deducted tax means nothing more is required.
• Filing without reading the information statements, and then explaining a mismatch a year later.
• Not verifying, and losing the year.
• Using last year's form after acquiring a new source of income.
• Choosing a regime by habit or by what a colleague did, rather than by computing both.
• Skipping the loss year, which is the year filing was worth most.
• Forgetting the previous employer after a job change.
• Omitting small interest that is fully reported.
• Claiming a deduction at the maximum rather than at what was actually paid.
• Ignoring an intimation because it looked like a receipt.
• Letting the registered email go stale, so every subsequent message is unseen.
• Waiting, in the belief that an unfiled year is a dormant one.

Where this stops being filing

A line worth drawing before you engage anybody, including us.

Filing is a documentation and compliance exercise: assembling records, reconciling against reported data, selecting the correct return, computing a straightforward liability, submitting and verifying. That is what a filing service is for and it is what most salaried returns need.

It becomes something else — a chartered accountant's work — when any of these is present:

• Capital gains of any complexity, and property gains in particular.
• Business or professional income, books, audit, or a presumptive election.
• A regime decision where the choice locks.
• Foreign income, foreign assets, or residency questions.
• A position to be taken on whether something is taxable or deductible.
• Advance tax planning, or a question about deducting tax from your own payments.
• An assessment, a reassessment, or an appeal — our appeal drafting service prepares the document and the position in it is a professional's.

We will say which of those you are in, and say it before taking a fee rather than after filing something we were not the right people to file.

Who asks us for this

Four situations, and the first words differ.

Most often, a salaried person a few days before a deadline who wants it done properly and quickly. For them the valuable part is not the submission — it is reading the information statements first, so that the return agrees with the record, and verifying the same day.

Second, somebody with two or three unfiled years, usually because a lender or a consulate has asked for returns. Their answer is the method above: establish the window for each year, reconstruct from the statements, file oldest first, verify each. They arrive expecting a disaster and leave with a dull plan.

Third, somebody who filed and something has gone wrong — a refund that has not come, an intimation with a demand on it, a return that turns out to be unverified. Each of those has a specific cause from the lists above and most are fixable the same week.

And fourth, somebody who has just realised a mistake in a return already filed and wants to know whether to leave it. The answer is almost always to revise, now, while that door is open.

What we collect

• Portal access, so the information statements can be read rather than guessed at.
• Salary records from every employer in the year, including the one you left.
• Interest certificates from banks and institutions, or the statements they come from.
• Deduction proofs for anything you intend to claim, at the actual amounts.
• Bank statements for the year, which are the backbone when records are thin.
• Details of any property let, self-occupied or sold.
• Details of any sale of securities, with contract notes.
• Any business or professional receipts, and what was deducted against you.
• Whether you hold anything outside India, including employee stock in a foreign parent.
• Last year's return, which tells us what carried forward and what regime was chosen.
• Any notice or intimation received, with its date.

What we file for you

1. Both information statements read and reconciled against what you give us, with every difference listed and explained or resolved before anything is filed.
2. Feedback given on any entry that is not yours, on the record, before filing.
3. The applicable return identified from your actual sources of income for that year, not from last year's habit.
4. Both regimes computed, with the figures shown to you, so the choice is arithmetic.
5. The window established — on time, belated, or the later route — with what each one costs you stated before you decide.
6. The return prepared and filed, with the liability or refund shown to you first.
7. Verified the same day, and the status confirmed rather than assumed.
8. The record handed over — the return as filed, the acknowledgement, the computation, and the statements as they stood.
9. For a backlog, the whole set in order, oldest first, as one exercise.

Our part runs to 1 – 3 days once we have the documents, which is usually the longer half of it.

Where a CA starts earning

Said plainly because it costs us work and you are entitled to know it.

For a salaried return with interest, a house property and ordinary deductions, a filing service is the right level of help and a chartered accountant's fee would be money you did not need to spend.

For anything in the list under "where this stops being filing", a chartered accountant is not an upgrade — they are the correct person, and the fee is usually a fraction of what the wrong answer costs. Capital gains on a property, a presumptive election, a locked regime choice, a foreign asset: in each of those, a cheap filing is the expensive option.

We will tell you which side of that line you are on at the start. We would rather hand you to somebody else than file a return we should not have filed.

What we will not sign

And one thing we will keep doing even where it loses the engagement: telling somebody that their situation needs a chartered accountant rather than a filing service.

Our charge for it

Our part for filing a return — reading and reconciling both information statements, identifying the applicable return, computing both regimes, establishing the window and what it costs, filing, verifying the same day, and handing over the record — is ₹799, with a turnaround of 1 – 3 days once the documents are in.

What is separate:

• Tax, interest and any late-filing charge — paid to the department, not to us, and shown to you before anything is submitted.
• The additional amount where an older year is being closed by the later route.
• A chartered accountant's fee, where your situation needs one — capital gains, business income, a presumptive election, foreign assets.
• A backlog of years, quoted per year rather than folded into one figure, because each year is its own exercise.
• Reconstruction work where records are missing and the position has to be built from bank statements.

And the honest framing: for a straightforward salaried return this is a small exercise and you should not be paying much for it anywhere. The part worth paying for is the reading and the reconciliation before the form is touched — because that is what prevents the correspondence that costs real money a year later.

Court work is for your advocate, whose fee is engaged and paid by you directly; we do not quote, collect or share it.

Where a filing is signed with a certificate rather than verified another way, the device holding it is your ability to sign and the record shows nothing about who used it. See digital signature certificate — possession is authority.

An unfiled year stays open for a company exactly as it does for a person — and a company nobody closed keeps generating them. What ending it actually requires is in company strike off — a company you stopped using has not stopped existing.

Questions people actually ask