Why you need to Hire a Tax Professional to file your Income Tax returns

If maintaining the books and following the numbers simply isn’t your forte, please appoint some professional to help you file your income tax returns. There are no rational grounds to get yourself into a problem.

Hiring a professional is like finding the right person for the right job, the entire thing can be completed precisely from the beginning (and potentially saves your money in the long run).

Starting a New Business

When you start a new business it requires an expert knowledge. You wouldn’t jump into swimming pool without swimming lessons. In the same way, it requires some guidance on taxes before starting a business.

Tax person with professional expertise can help you in finding loads of deductions, exemptions and prevent you from facing troubles.

• Professionals remains updated on changing tax laws
• You get the expertise and experienced advice of the professional (like a CA)
• An extra pair of eyes to find the mistakes
• They turn into your representatives before assessing authorities to represent you, should the need arise or if your case is elected under scrutiny
• They provide tax guidance all through the year

Some of the major Benefits of hiring a professional to file your Income Tax returns:

1. A professional knows how the tax authorities work and how they verify your return. For TDS, they will always reconcile your TDS claim with the person who has deducted your TDS. A professional will reconcile your TDS credit with Form 26AS and if there are any discrepancies he will help you to find the cause and the reasons behind this. He will also help you to get it resolved before filing your income tax returns.
2. One of the important changes that have emerged in Indian tax framework is cash flow reconciliation. If your cash flow and bank accounts balances are not in sync you will be in trouble. As most of our transaction is going be cashless it’s easy for tax authorities to trace it out what is your income and expenditure. And if you have cash surplus which you cannot justify with your bank account balances not only there are chances of heavy penalty but also inquiry for earlier years are high. A professional will help you to keep your cash and bank in sync before filing your income tax returns
3. Ever Increasing complexities in Tax Laws-The Indian Tax regulations and codes are very much complex and are filled up with jargons. Sailing through this ocean can be problematical. Furthermore, amendments (either retrospective or not), changes are made in the taxation policy almost every year. It not so possible for a normal person to stay updated about all the tax laws (rules and regulation). Consequently, you may end up filing an erroneous or incorrect tax return.
4. Don’t get misled by Return form names as Saral, Sahaj- They are not Saral to say the least- Filing of tax returns is not as easy as it seems. It includes a series of procedures to be followed. You are supposed to give all the correct and complete details about your income, investments, assets etc. An incorrect filing of return could land you in a soup. You might end up paying the excess tax than necessary. Assistance from a Chartered Accountant can prove handy to ward off any eventuality.
5. Taxability of Incomes/ Various deductions available- All your incomes may or may not be taxable. Your aggregate final income for the computation of tax purposes is typically different. It means you are efficiently saving tax on a different source of income. You may not always have the idea about these tax saving options. A professional can be helpful here. A professional can help to reduce your taxable income. While finalizing your taxable income, a person with professional expertise will consider all the exemptions and deduction provided in the Income Tax Act. A professional may also help in providing advice about tax-saving instruments.
6. An inadvertent mistake could cost you a lot in terms of Penalty- If you having a large tax liability and even a little inadvertent mistake could cost you hardly, hiring a professional is a sound decision to take.
7. Linking with Previous Year- The data in current year needs to be correlated with previous year’s return. This may have some bearing on taxable income /tax liability of current year. Any mismatch in both the returns may trigger scrutiny by Income Tax’s monitoring mechanisms. The Tax professional would be competent to advise you on how to stay protected on these
8. Much of the process of the tax payments are done through online means. If you are not familiar with the computer and internet, you may encounter problems while filing and paying Income tax. There are several kinds of tax forms with different parameters and filing systems; it may be complicated for you to understand these. If you can file your tax returns online effortlessly then there is no requirement to appoint a professional, but if not, you will need one to help you file your income tax returns.

Moreover, often over the period of time a tax professional helps you save taxes and thus pays for itself out of savings of tax done for you