Adgully Exclusive | Why should online Tax-filing be left: Taxsum's Sanjay Kapadiaa

With the changing environment of e-governance and e-compliance in the field of tax laws, the team has taken initiative to set up real time online portal for tax counseling, compliance and filing of returns of Income in India.

The portal ensures that the usually tedious process of Tax-filing is made convenient and easy. Taxsum provides separate gateways for Retired personnel, Tax-payers, Tax professionals, Insurance advisors, Commission agents and Government employees to file taxes online, thus ensuring a customized service for every category of tax payer. It is the only portal in India where every category of tax return (ITR1-ITR6) can be filed. To remove the barrier of language, Taxsum.com also provides its services in Hindi.

Adgully caught up with Sanjay Kapadiaa, Chief Executive Officer, Taxsum, to know more about the organisation's plan for 2011. Talking about the growing online tax filing space in India, he says, "The online tax-filing space in India has been witnessing a growth of 100% year on year. Last year close to 92lakh people filed taxes using online tax-filing portals. This time, the number may reach upto 2crores for the financial year 2011-12. The delay in issuing the refund money for various administrative reasons has been the bane of the system for the last several decades."

Kapadiaa further adds that all this could change for the better in the case of those who choose to file their returns online simply because the government plans to process the electronic claims on priority - as it is easy and fast - and send the refund within a month or so. "Pranab Mukherjee recently said in a speech that individuals should opt for online tax filing as this reduces the delays in the refund process as a result of added manual labor and hassle of physical fling. Added to this, there have been a lot of news reports lately speaking about how NRI's are assured quicker refunds if they file taxes online which will give an impetus to the process," he adds.

So aren't there any security issues involved ?

Kapadiaa says, "No, this is not true. Infact, very few documents are required for online filing of income tax return and the portals rendering services for online filing of income tax returns such as TaxSum.com is hosted in the most secured environment carrying ISO 27001 Certification. TaxSum.com takes extreme precautions to ensure the safety and security of the information. It does not store any user data in the system. TaxSum.com is a fully compliant product."

TaxSum.com is trying to reach prospective assesses through different kind of PR initiatives, advertisements through Google and digital PR activities involving Facebook and LinkedIn.

However Kapadiaa adds that online payment is not accepted at large by customers due to unawareness of online security and non-reach to online payment modes. "The real challenge is to educate taxpayers about the security measures taken care by the government to assure the safety of the taxpayer and hence make them comfortable with online portals," he explains.

Online Tax-filing differs from profession to profession. To avoid this confusion and easy the tax-filing process of an taxpayer, TaxSum.com has designed special gateways for Retired personnel, Tax-payers, Tax professionals, Insurance advisors, Commission agents and Government employees. Through exceptional security, robust and simple online solution along with online help in format of FAQs and discussion board TaxSum.com creates a sense of fulfillment for an individual to file taxes online.

As a roadmap for the company, he says, "TaxSum.com is looking at major market share in online tax return filing in ensuing years due to the core chartered accountant team involvement and compliances followed along with IT and Data security through ISO 27001 data center."

TaxSum.com has also come up with various initiatives to ensure smooth, easy and convenient tax-filing experience.

Mobile application: Taxsum.com provides a unique application that allows users the facility of filing e-returns through mobile devices.

Complete solution for all taxpayers: All tax/financial data for individuals and family can be stored under one secure login id, users can compute taxes under different heads, users can procure their own digital signature from Taxsum.com for e filing.

Digital Signature: Secure Login ID provided will ensure that they can file taxes from any part of the world using this signature, without being limited to one single computer. Taxsum provides users the option of filing taxes with or without a digital signature as well.

While signing off Kapadiaa adds, "Online tax filing is the buzz in the market created for the end user, i.e. for the convenience and simplicity for the Taxpayer. Filing of income tax return is done online all across the globe. When India is catching with the world on the technology front, why should online Tax-filing be left behind?" | By Prabha Hegde [prabha(at)adgully.com]