Beware of some of the commonly made mistakes while filing income tax returns. Here are some points that you must consider before filing tax returns:

Compromising Confidentiality of Tax Data: While you should always seek financial advice from unbiased and reliable sources, some companies offer services of filing income tax returns simply to obtain the financial data from customers. Beware! These service providers may later use this data for marketing purposes and you may end up receiving lots of unwanted calls from agents selling various insurance and investment products. So, always understand the privacy policy of the service provider filing tax return on your behalf. 

Signing Blank ITR Forms: While filing income tax returns, many people hand over the photocopy (or original) of their documents to an agent and sign on the blank ITR form. The agent then fills up the data in the signed form for filing tax return. This is not only dangerous from data confidentiality perspective, but is also often prone to errors in your tax return. Poor handwriting and manual computations can lead to defective return. So, never sign blank return forms and always keep the copy of your filed return.

Providing Incorrect Email-id: Since all the communication by the income tax department is now done via email, one should make sure that a valid and functional email id is provided for filing income tax returns. Many individuals make a mistake of providing email ids which are either not in use or get discontinued due to inactivity or change of jobs. So, remember to provide an email id which you regularly access.

Many people miss out on the benefits of filing tax return online. These include faster refund processing and lesser chances of scrutiny. Millions of individuals are e-filing tax returns in India and getting benefit of the convenience and accuracy of e-filing. Even if you file your return physically, it is first entered in electronic format before processing and hence there is always a scope of data entry error in your return. So, select a good e-filing service provider for filing income tax returns from your PC.

About the author

Sudhir Kaushik has been a practicing tax consultant for the last 17 years. He is a Fellow Chartered Accountant and conducts seminars in large companies to help salaried employees with income tax and investment queries. Sudhir brings domain knowledge of income tax laws and their compliance difficulties faced by individuals. He is the author of Income Tax Handbook For Salaried Employees for smart financial planning and investments for salaried people. He enjoys an excellent reputation and has a strong network in the corporate sector and public sector undertakings.