
ClearTax (YC S14) helps India file tax returns in ‘less than five minutes’ - williswee
https://www.techinasia.com/cleartax-makes-efiling-tax-returns-easy/
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deepGem
To be honest, the Indian government's e-filing site is good enough for a vast
majority of tax payers. The interface is simple and fast. If you have a
digital signature there is no need to mail any hard copies of any documents.

Meanwhile, ClearTax is really helpful if your returns are complicated. You
have 3 houses, own stocks and a business etc. If you sign up for their gold
package, a dedicated CA will assist you in all your returns and is available
throughout the year over phone or email.

~~~
srisa
This year they have come up with something called netbanking verification.
With that you don't have to mail any documents even if you don't have digital
signature. If I remember correctly, there are other means of verification in
addition to netbanking.

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yati
I took up a job outside India this year, and lost my India number. Now I just
can't use the netbanking verification. I still haven't mailed the documents :/

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nmridul
You need to convert your accounts (legally required once attaining NRI status)
to NRO/NRE status and then you will receive OTP on your email. This is the
case atleast with ICICI.

Previously had to close the resident account and then open new NRO/NRE
accounts. But now it seems just changing the status of your old accounts and
it retains the old numbers.

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mixmastamyk
Meanwhile, the IRS is still stuck in the dark ages, it's pretty disgusting.
California's return is online and hasn't required a third-party for several
years now, so we know what is possible.

By comparison, I've seen the online tax system in New Zealand and it is a
breath of fresh air, everything is already entered for you, and of course a
lot simpler. It's just a matter of following a short wizard to add additional
exemptions or what have you. It takes about 30 minutes to read the
instructions and finish, very doable for the lay person. Their banking system
also makes the US look like it's in the stone age, but don't get me started.

Overall the situation in the US is quite shameful for the country that
invented the internet.

~~~
buyx
The problem with pre-populated online forms is that if there are issues with
the data that the tax authority receives from third parties, proving it wrong
is difficult, and the burden of proof shifts to the taxpayer.

A few years ago, I resigned my job and I transferred my pension to what's
called a Preservation Fund. In South Africa, you can get your pension paid out
when you leave a job. Getting a pension paid out incurs tax, while
transferring to a preservation fund is tax free.

However, the company that administered the pension fund screwed up, and issued
a tax certificate that treated the pension transfer as a taxable payout, and
submitted it to the South African Revenue Service (SARS). The pension
administrators proved to be incompetent, and were incapable of fixing the
issue.

After months of battling, I managed to get the issue sorted out, and I got a
refund from the taxman, rather than the hefty payment that was initially
assessed. Other colleagues who also left had less energy than me simply paid
the tax caused by the pension company's administrative error. I'm sure there
were hundreds of people around the country affected by the error, and most
must have rolled over and paid.

I've read that one of the objections to having a pre-populated system in the
US is that people are less likely to object if the forms are pre-filled. My
experience would seem to confirm that view.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Norway has been on a pre-populated system for all tax returns for a few years
now, and last year transitioned to "silent consent", i.e. if you don't
register any changes before the deadline, it means you accept the prepopulated
values. From the statistics I've seen, ~60% don't register any changes, while
~20% register additional information, ~10% correct errors and ~10% register
both additional information and correct errors. A lot of the additional info
and corrections is stuff like kindergarten expenses (which are tax exempt up
to a limit of $3000/year) or donations to charities, since it's up to the
kindergarten or charity to register these, and they often forget or get things
wrong.

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anupshinde
We don't need ClearTax for the usual 'less than 5 minutes' return filing. The
Indian Govt's website is pretty simple and easy to use (except if you are
using it on the last working days of return-filing). Not to say, the Govt's
site team are working on improving it further by aggregating tax related data
and reducing data entry even further.

The following is for a freelancer and entrepreneur-

The Govt's site is complex for entrepreneurs (self-employed people) or small
companies. And so is ClearTax (because of the complex rules). For that
ClearTax has a blog that is pretty helpful in understanding the system and
places your trust on them. But when I dived into the details ClearTax makes
things sound so simple and increases your procedures and you end up paying
unnecessary tax. Luckily when I started I had evaluated ClearTax and also
liked it - its when I get into the details (the fine print of tax-laws) that
my trust eroded off ClearTax.

ClearTax is also costlier than consulting a local practising CA (1.5 - 2x).
However finding a good CA (or CA firm) and getting comfortable with them is a
challenge. And it is worth pursuing the challenge. Even if I had to start
again, I would consult a local CA. Also a good CA can help you save money
and/or taxes (in legal ways). Apart from that I have heard that ClearTax has
operational problems (like they miss out on filing returns when they are
overloaded) - This last part is just from references and ClearTax might have
solved it.

Note that the tax-laws for businesses in India are way complex and it is hard
to understand those. Add to that the changes that occur every few years and
the multiple tax authorities. The country rightly deserves the "difficult to
do biz" tag. Many CAs err (or are just unsure) and you end up paying more tax
than what was actually required. I would place ClearTax in that category.

~~~
architgupta
Archit from ClearTax here. We are working very hard on creating a new product
for freelancers and businesses.

Following is for the freelancer / business scenario:

We have to invent the interfaces, the design language, while making sure
people can deal with tax concepts and pay appropriate tax. There are difficult
concepts like depreciation which need careful handling.

Our freelancer / smb version of taxes will dramatically simplify life for self
preparation.

Imagine an ITR-4S equivalent for freelancers which we are creating.

Note that a good CA can help you and come out ahead of software because of the
complexity involved. But we hope to make software good enough for the services
industry.

By the way, we are the makers of TaxCloudIndia.com which has 10K+ CA firms
using our software. We have some of the largest CA firms using our tech. I
believe a good CA can offer advisory today which software isn't able to yet.

I'm hoping to fix the "difficult to do" tag for Indian taxes with the efforts
of the ClearTax team. That's our mission!

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architgupta
Hi,

I am the co-founder of ClearTax [http://cleartax.in](http://cleartax.in)

We help Indians e-File their Tax Returns.

Addressing some common points in the thread: we work great for both simple and
complex tax returns.

For simple tax returns: The huge improvement is zero data entry -- we'll
automatically parse your Form-16 and fill out the correct tax form. We'll ask
questions relevant to you. We automatically detect corner cases, mistakes,
scenarios for notices and flag them for you.

We help in cases where you haven't claimed HRA, have interest income (and
claim 80TTA deduction automatically for you!)

There's a lot of tax complications which self filers don't know and the
Government software isn't informative and automated enough.

We end up saving taxes because our software does more. :)

~~~
newsignup
Some hard questions: What are your plans post government's success of Digital
India campaign and having their e-filing much more simplied? :)

~~~
architgupta
It is great for us. Better APIs, more stability, clear wind behind our backs
for a more digitization, more tax payers, more transparency, no middlemen,
more things in white.

The Government software isn't very simple to use if you have switched jobs,
have HRA to claim, or have more deductions than you have declared to the
employer.

Many people miss out on deductions (such as 80TTA) which we automatically
account for.

Plus we reduce data entry mistakes, and the other things I pointed out in the
original comment.

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thepoet
As an individual taxpayer, I would not pay to use ClearTax. I have filed
returns both on the Indian Government website and ClearTax. I do not see an
added advantage with ClearTax, they show the same bunch of fields and as a
last step, submit the data to the government website (I am not sure if the
Government website crashes, how this will help ClearTax). I assume the only
advantage is they can read your Name, addresses and gross salary data from the
two page PDF you upload, not a big deal IMO. As someone who has freelanced a
bit, I would still not purchase their INR 5000+ plans. I have had CAs do it
for 2500 or less. I assume the site is popular among first-timers or people
who have not really tried the Income Tax website recently.

~~~
arihant
The desirability of paying to reduce pain and interactions with humans to get
a job done increases proportional to income. I'm sure we all have been at a
point in life (college) where we would read Indian tax code to try and avoid
paying that 2500 as well. That changed, and it would continue to change for
most people.

I would have other concerns, like privacy, but I doubt their pricing would
come in my way. One less person to deal with is at least 3 hours of saved
time.

~~~
thepoet
The point I made with individual tax pay is there is no pain, so I would not
pay. In case of freelancers, ClearTax does not reduce your effort, instead of
your local CA, you just have to deal with someone sitting in another city.

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tatx
Cleartax has done an amazing job, really. I filed my last two returns using
Cleartax and everything went without a hitch. Even when the system fails to
parse the Form-16 correctly it is easy enough to just manually enter the data,
save it, come back to it later and complete filing the returns. I have had a
harder time filing tax returns with TurboTax, though that was a while back.
Cleartax kept sending me repeated email reminders to complete the filing
process even after it was already complete, so there's a bug somewhere :) but
otherwise kudos to Archit and the rest of the team.

Hell, I am ready to join their efforts, if only they would have a grumpy old
guy like me on the team :)

~~~
architgupta
Would love to talk -- archit@cleartax.in :)

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tn13
Individual returns in India are pretty simple and does not require cleartax or
any other software.

Having experience IRS incompetence I can safely say India's income tax
department appears efficient.

~~~
psibi
I used to fill using the government site and I find it's UI terrible. Unless I
know what I'm doing, I can easily screw up there. ClearTax makes it easy for a
layman person to understand and use it.

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chdir
To broadly summarize Indian tax rules & software:

1) You have a straight forward return (salary, interest, capital gains), the
govt. website is good enough to file the tax. Cleartax is a tad bad
friendlier.

2) You have a complicated scenario. Cleartax won't be a big help. Reason is
that Indian tax laws lack clarity. They are written in a hard to understand
lawyer speak that doesn't cover all the possible permutations. A local CA is a
good option in this case, but also stop by the temple on your way back. Pray
to god that tax tribunal is having a good day when assessing your "out of
ordinary" return.

Look at these court precedents :
[http://www.moneymantra.co.in/detailsPage.php?id=6612&title=B...](http://www.moneymantra.co.in/detailsPage.php?id=6612&title=Banking&wrt=Subhask%20Lakhotia)

They seem like a waste of court time due to inadequate clarity in tax rules.
Or maybe they were purposely written like this so that corrupt tax officials
can harass citizens.

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thewhitetulip
I am an Indian and the regular process of income return from the official
Income tax website takes less than ten minutes, so cleartax isn't that great

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abhimir
I am sure this was just a growing pain point, but I could not get any answers
from them for about a week while filing my IT returns, just kept getting
automated reminders. So I ended up going with Taxmantra, another e-tax filing
provider and got it done within a day.

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ausjke
Preparing all the documents, receipts, the various numbers before filing the
tax takes a long time, I can not imagine how you can do tax in 5 minutes even
you have all the data ready, but anyway it's good news if we have one here at
US.

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SoulMan
Does it still require sending a sight hard copy via postal mail ? In the
government site I don't need to, starting from this year.

BTW pretty much every other 3rd part sites takes "less than 5 minutes", not
sure whats special about this.

~~~
psibi
No, it's not required.

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nraynaud
The French government pre-fill a lot of things (everything in the most common
cases).

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linux_devil
I used clear tax myself last financial year, and it was a good experience,
very simple to use. User experience is much better than other alternatives
especially one provided by government.

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peteretep
If they're using the HMRC form in the accompanying image, presumably they're
doing it wrong...

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senthilnayagam
problem is not filling the forms, 90% of the tax forms are submitted on the
last week. Often the tax site will crash causing panic. Clear tax is storing
and does retries which is the reason why many are using it

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Karna
I use winman software for the same purpose.

