ITR filing for 2011

To file ITR (for salaried personnel with form 16 available), two ways you can follow -

1) Online -  Just keep your form 16 handy and fill all details on net itself. [read below for details].
2) Offline - Fill sahej form available at IT dept website (http://incometaxindia.gov.in/download_all.asp)& submit at nearest IT office. You can also check for ITR camps frequently organised by IT dept in month on July.

For Online ITR, again you have two ways -
1) Using IT Dept Excel sheet - offline tool to calculate your tax refund/payable. Can be used in case you have just one source or one form 16. else you have to calculate all at your own. [https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal/downloads.do]

2) Use tax filing sites - Use diff tax filing sites, some of them are free as well. Like www.taxyogi.com

 To use this site follow like -

a) Create login on this site.
b) Do fill all the details as per your form 16. In case you have more than one form 16 or form 16A, just fill one by one. It will ask for more details later, so no need to calculate anything by yourself.
c) See how much you need to pay more or get refund. In case you need to pay, fill challan 280 online and fill self assessment tax in your details as advised by site.
d) generate and mail xml file to yourself along with filled sahej form with your details. Verify details in sahej form and correct in case you find anything to be.
e) Create login on it Dept website and upload xml there [https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/portal/login.do].
f) download and print IVR doc. Send it to IT office banglore.
g) heyyyyyyyy, you are done, congrats!!

Budget 2011 & Income tax

In Union Budget, finance Minister Mr. Mukherjee proposed to raise the income tax exemption limit for general tax payers to Rs 1.80 lakh per annum from Rs 1.60 lakh at present and introduced a high new tax slab for senior citizens of 80 years and above. Also, he proposed to reduce the age limit for consideration as senior citizens from 65 years to 60.

The new exemption for Senior citizens will be for income up to Rs 2.5 lakh, higher from Rs 2.4 lakh now.

Forex tips for IT guys

While moving on a business trip to abraod location, employee gets forex as daily allowance.

Legally its like daily allowance and is not taxable as per India or foreign tax laws UNLESS spent as a whole at business trip itself. But most of time we bring some forex back as our savings. :)

Here the story begins.. Now as you have not spent the amount at your foreign trip, you need to pay taxes on that (Legally). But most of the people don't follow it.

This can bring you under the scrutiny, so here are some tips to play safe -

1. Before travel, keep some money here in india itself after discussion with your other colleugues abroad. Most of the time, total amount is not required. Why to carry more, if less is more than enough.

2. Prefer to spend Travellers cheque (TC) on business trip first and then switch to cash. TCs are more subject to legal catch as you need to necessarily submit your passport & other details to encash them.

3. On return to india, exchange forex as and when required and avoid encashing big amount in one go.

4. Keep withdrawing some amount from your salary account too. Don't depend on forex totally for daily expenses.

5. Don't deposit big amounts in your account at once, divide it in chunks of < 50000 and deposit then.

6. Prefer to exchange money with local vendors and avoid banks for two fold advantage. First, you will get good exchange rate and second you need not to show documents if you have good understanding with vendor.

Filing tax for salaried Employee

Lets learn this in 4 steps for the sake of easiness -
1. Sumbmitting details to company's finance dept. - Here TDS (tax deduction on source) will be calculated based on your income & tax saving intuments used. They calculate your final tax libility (only for the salary earned) & provide FORM 16 which contains details about your earning, exemptions & taxes.
2. Computing final tax libility - You should add your other sources of income in whatever comes out in form 16 (like income from bank interest etc, banks will issue a FORM 16A for that) to compute your final tax to be paid.
3. Filing ITR - Now the final thing is to file ITR[income tax return] using data collected. find my earlier posts to know the process and its components.
4. Collecting ITR ack - most of the time posted to the address you mentioned in your ITR.