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Business News/ Money / Personal Finance/  It’s time to start the prep work for filing your tax returns
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It’s time to start the prep work for filing your tax returns

An assessee gets four months to prepare for filing tax returns. Here is a tax-preparation checklist

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Taxation is a complex subject and the frequently changing laws, formats and policies can boggle anyone’s mind. An assessee gets four months to prepare for filing tax returns. Here is a tax-preparation checklist: 

Link Aadhaar with PAN:  This must be done before filing your tax returns. Failure to do so by 31 March 2023 (extended deadline) will lead to inactivation of your PAN. 

Salaried and other income: Usually, a salaried employee gets into action only after receiving Form 16 from his employer. However, it is advisable to keep a few documents such as monthly salary receipts and details regarding all allowances and tax exemptions ready beforehand. If you have interest income, then to avail the benefit under section 80TTA, you must have a bank statement for interest on savings account, an interest income statement for fixed deposits and a TDS certificate from the bank.

Documents for house property: ‘Income from house property‘ is an intricate matter as different types of house property entail different calculations. Taxability may not be on actual rent received. If the property is not let out, tax will be charged on the potential income the property can yield. If you have rented out a property, then you are allowed to deduct municipal taxes, 30% of rent as standard deduction, along with the home loan interest from the annual rental income. 

For this purpose, obtain the interest certificate from the lender with a break-up of interest paid and principal paid for the year. You can claim tax benefits u/s 24B and 80C.

Sale of equity shares: If treated as stock-in-trade, then it will be covered as income from business irrespective of the period for which it is held. Otherwise, the capital gain on sale of shares gets taxed as follows. Long-term capital gains (on shares held for more than one year) above 1 lakh annually from equity shares are taxed at 10% and short-term capital gains are taxed at 15%. 

Documents needed for section 80C : The tax-saving schemes which qualify for this are PPF, NSC, ULIPS, ELSS, and LIC policy. Receipts for investments made in these should be kept carefully. 

Form 26AS and annual information system (AIS):  Form 26AS is a consolidated statement containing all information on a taxpayer such as TDS, details of tax collected from you, advance tax payments made, etc. It makes claiming tax credit easier. A mismatch in form 26AS and the income tax return results in an inquiry by the tax authorities.

AIS is a comprehensive statement of financial transactions in a financial year providing details of income received from various sources irrespective of the fact that tax has been deducted at source. After the electronically centralized processing of the AIS form, an assessee can check the following details—TDS/TCS, SFT, payment of taxes and demand and refund.

To download Form 26AS and AIS, you need to login to your tax filing account on https://eportal.incometax.gov.in/, click on ‘e-file’ and the ‘services’ tab to find the respective documents.

Deepak Jain is executive chairman, TaxManager.in

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Published: 23 Jun 2022, 11:09 PM IST
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