Income Tax
A return is the end of the year's work, not the whole of it.
Most of what determines a tax bill is decided long before the return is filed — in how the books were kept, whether advance tax was paid on time, and whether a transaction was structured before it happened or explained after.
What is handled
Returns for the business and for the people who own it, advance tax through the year, and the reply when a notice arrives.
- ✓Income tax returns — individual, firm, LLP, company, trust
- ✓Advance tax computed each quarter rather than found in March
- ✓TDS: deduction, payment, quarterly returns and Form 16 / 16A
- ✓Capital gains — property, shares, and the reinvestment that shelters them
- ✓Tax audit under section 44AB
- ✓Presumptive taxation under 44AD and 44ADA, and when it stops being worth it
- ✓Notices under 143(1), 143(2) and 148, rectifications and appeals
Who this is for.
The return is different for each, and so is what has to be watched through the year.
Individuals and salaried
Proprietors and professionals
Firms and LLPs
Companies
Advance tax is the part people are caught by.
Tax on business and professional income is not payable once a year. It is payable in four instalments — June, September, December and March — and interest runs under sections 234B and 234C where they are short. A business with current books computes each instalment; a business whose books are written up in March discovers all four at once, having paid interest on three of them.
The same is true in the other direction. TDS deducted from your receipts is your money already paid; if it is not reflected in your Form 26AS because a deductor filed incorrectly, it is not credited to you either. That is worth finding in the quarter it happened.
The instalment dates are on the due dates page.
When a notice arrives.
A 143(1) intimation is usually arithmetic — a mismatch between what you claimed and what the department has on record — and is often answered by a rectification. A 143(2) is a scrutiny and asks you to prove what you filed. A 148 says the department believes income escaped assessment. They are very different letters and the first mistake is treating them as the same one.
All three have reply dates, and all three get harder if the date passes. Bring the notice with the return it refers to and the books behind that return.
Before the quarter closes, not after.
Advance tax, a TDS return, a notice with a date on it — each of these is cheaper to deal with in the quarter it belongs to.
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