Today is the last day to file Income tax return, know easy steps if you haven’t filed yet

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The last date for filing income-tax returns was extended to August 5, and it ends today. Tax returns for 2015-16 (assessment year 2016-17) were originally to be filed by July 31. But in view of the day-long strike at public sector banks, the deadline was extended to August 5. However, the deadline for Jammu and Kashmir will be August 31 in view of the ongoing turmoil in the state.

The return is mandatory if your taxable income is above Rs 2,50,000.

The Revenue Authorities have introduced new reporting requirements for FY 2015-16 for Assets and Liabilities for individuals with income above Rs 50,00,000. In case of this, the individual has to disclose the cost value of all the assets above the specified amount, in the tax form, as well as disclose the debts associated with these assets- land, building, cash-in-hand, jewellery, bullion, vehicles, yachts, boats and any aircraft owned. It is advisable that you retain the purchase receipt of any of these assets.

It has almost become a ritual for people to delay filing their income tax returns till the last date and for the government to extend the same due to “popular demand”. However, the long queues that used to be another annual feature of the tax filing week has become a thing of the past due to the growing popularity of income tax e-filing.

The incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in has made it really easy for people to file their returns from the comfort of their homes.

If you have not yet filled you returns, here are some easy and essential steps to do it before the time ends.

Step 1: Select the right form: You have to select the form based on your source of incomes. So ITR-1 is for salaried individuals whose get a salary or a pension along with income from a house/property or from other sources, things like lottery. This is not for those with multiple houses/properties, income from winning a lottery, agricultural income of above Rs 5000, income from business. Tax payers filing for double tax relief should also not use this.

ITR-2A, introduced this year, is for those individuals who have income from more than one house property. ITR-2 can be used by individuals with no income from business / profession. ITR-3 is for individuals partnering in a firm, but not for those earning income from a proprietorship form. ITR-4 is for those individual earning income from a proprietorship firm. ITR-5 and 6 are for use by companies alone.

Step 2: Get your Form 16 ready: This form given by your employer shows your saving as well as the tax deducted. There will be multiple forms if you have changed jobs over the assessment year.

Step 3: Additional documents: You might need your bank statements, interest certificates, and your housing loan certificate (in case of housing loan).

Step 4: Download Form 26AS from the e-filing website to see which taxes are deducted at source

Step 5: Filing/uploading: Individuals with over Rs 5,00,000 income have to e-file their tax returns. You will get an automatic acknowledgement once the return is successfully uploaded. Verify this and submit the acknowledgement online, ideally with e-verification. This completes the process of filing your income-tax return.

Source: http://indianexpress.com/article/business/business-others/income-tax-return-filling-last-date-steps-to-file-it-2955207/

ClearTax raises $2 million from FF Angel and Sequoia Capital

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Financial technology startup Defmacro Software , which owns and operates online tax returns filing platform ClearTax , has raised $2 million (Rs 13.3 crore) from FF Angel , the angel investing arm of Peter Thiel-led Founders Fund , and Sequoia Capital .

The five year-old company will use the proceeds from the round to launch a slew of consumer-focused tax-saving products, including mutual funds and other equity-linked saving schemes. It will also be adding to its leadership team, said Archit Gupta , chief executive of ClearTax.

“We have taken the long route, and now we are extremely excited to have some of the biggest thought leaders and investors on board as our partners,” Gupta said. “We are an instrument-agnostic platform that will allow consumers to choose their rate of return and select what to have in their tax savings basket.”

The transaction, which closed last week, marks FF Angel’s first investment in India, and comes a month after Bengaluru-based ClearTax secured $1.3 million in a seed funding round from a group of Silicon Valley investors including PayPal cofounder Max Levchin and Scott Banister, an early investor in Facebook and Uber.

EU seeks to make it easier to buy online from other countries

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An eBay sign is seen at an office building in San Jose, California May 28, 2014.

Online retailers would be banned from stopping a customer in one EU country buying from a website based in another, under a proposal issued on Wednesday to make it easier for consumers to shop across the bloc.

The European Commission said its law would stop “geoblocking” where companies limit access to their websites based on user location, often forcing customers to use versions based in their own country, sometimes with higher prices.

“In the online world, all too often consumers are blocked from accessing offers in other countries,” the Commission said in a statement.

“Such discrimination has no place in the single market.”

The law would affect companies such as Amazon, eBay and Zalando as well as to sales of services provided in a specific location, for example car rental, accommodation and concert tickets.

It would not initially apply to copyright-protected items such as e-books, music and games, although those might be included soon, the Commission said. So for the time being a German citizen would still be unable to buy a Spotify subscription in, for example, Estonia, where it is much cheaper.

The music industry welcomed the exemption, saying that to include such services in the geoblocking proposal would be “a serious blow for cultural diversity.”

Under Wednesday’s proposal, which requires the approval of the European Parliament and national governments to become law, retailers would not be allowed to block access to websites based on a user’s location or to re-route customers to a website version based in their own country without their consent.

Amazon already makes its websites accessible to customers anywhere in Europe, and says 98 percent of its own stock is available to shoppers from any European country.

While e-commerce websites will not be allowed to prevent customers in one EU country buying products in another, they will not be forced to deliver cross-border.

Therefore, an Italian buying a TV from a German website would either have to arrange their own delivery or collect it at the trader’s premises.

The Commission hopes the new rules will increase the proportion of consumers who buy online from another country, currently only 15 percent.

“The European Commission is doing the right thing by helping solve practical problems faced by online businesses, particularly small and medium sized businesses,” said eBay’s’ Paul Todd, Senior Vice President of EMEA (Europe, Middle East and Africa).

A business group said the proposal failed to address the reasons companies use geoblocking, such as differing VAT rates and consumer protection rules.

“This is like putting a sticking plaster on a broken leg,” said John Higgins, director general of DIGITALEUROPE, which represents companies such as Sony, Google and Dropbox.

In a separate proposal, the EU executive sought to increase the transparency of prices for cross-border parcel delivery and to give national authorities the power to assess whether they are affordable.

Source: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-ecommerce-geoblocking-idUSKCN0YG1DC

E-Commerce Industry to Cross $38 Billion Mark in India

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India’s e-commerce market is likely to touch $38-billion-mark in 2016, a 67 per cent jump over the $23 billion revenue it clocked last year, according to the Associated Chambers of Commerce and Industry (Assocham).

“Increasing internet and mobile penetration, growing acceptability of online payments and favourable demographics has provided the e-commerce sector in India the unique opportunity to companies connect with their customers,” according to the Assocham’s latest report.

Buying trends during 2015 have witnessed a significant upward movement due to aggressive online discounts. India’s e-commerce market was worth about $3.8 billion in 2009, it went up to $17 billion in 2014 and to $23 billion in 2015 and is expected to touch $38-billion mark by 2016, said D.S. Rawat, Secretary General, Assocham.

Mobile commerce

Mobile commerce (m-commerce) is growing rapidly as a stable and secure supplement to the e-commerce industry. Shopping online through smart phones is proving to be a game changer and industry leaders believe that m-commerce could contribute up to 70 per cent of their total revenues, according to the report.

Mumbaikars had left behind all other cities in India shopping online in 2015. While Delhi residents rank second, Ahemdabad came third, Bangalore fourth and Kolkata fifth in their preference for online shopping in 2015.

“The customer is connected 24×7 through their smart phones, tablets and other mobile devices which is leading to a gradual evolution of e-commerce into mobile commerce and there is an issue of convenience which also leads to impulsive buying,” Mr Rawat said. The browsing trends, which have broadly shifted from the desktop to mobile devices in India, online shopping is also expected to follow suit, as one out of three customers currently makes transactions through mobiles in Tier-1 and Tier-2 cities. In 2015, 78 per cent of shopping queries were made through mobile devices, compared to 46 per cent in 2013, said Mr. Rawat.

The highest growth rate was seen in the apparel segment, almost 69.5 per cent over last year followed by electronic items by 62 per cent, baby care products at 53 per cent, beauty and personal care products at 52 per cent and home furnishings at 49 per cent. The most important contributing factor to the rapid growth of digital commerce in India is the increase in the use of smartphones. Mobiles and mobile accessories have taken up the maximum share of the digital commerce market in India, according to the paper.
Online shoppers

Almost 45 per cent of online shoppers reportedly preferred cash on delivery mode of payment over credit cards (16 per cent) and debit cards (21 per cent).

Only ten per cent opted for internet banking and a scanty seven per cent preferred cash cards, mobile wallets and other such modes of payment.

As per the findings, many small companies have also established online stores for group buying, which enable customers to obtain goods at a discount so long as a certain number of people make the purchases.

Shopping centres, whole sale markets and supermarkets should create their online stores to reduce costs and develop product-tracking systems, Mr Rawat said.

Among the age segments, the 18-25 years age group was the fastest growing age segment online with user growth being contributed by both male and female segments, it was said in the paper.

The survey highlights that three per cent of regular shoppers are in 18-25 age group, 52 per cent in 26-35, eight per cent in 36-45 and two per cent in the age group of 45-60.

Sixty-five per cent of online shoppers are male with females constituting 35 per cent. The products that were sold most in 2015 were mobile phones, iPad and accessories, MP3 players, digital cameras and jewellery, among others.

As per the study, there would be more than a five to seven-fold increase in revenue generated through e-commerce compared to last year with all branded apparel, accessories, jewellery, gifts, footwear available at a cheaper rates and being delivered at the doorstep. The most popular among the e-commerce websites — Snapdeal, Myntra, Flipkart, Amazon, Jabong and others — have been doling out massive price cuts or discounts on purchase of popular brands of apparels, footwear, electronic goods, coinciding with the year end.

According to the report, the one of the driving factors for the online shopping is the age profile of the consumers who are young, between 15-35 years. This segment is quite net savvy and enjoys doing new type of shopping experience, virtually from their desk top in office, lap tops at home or even Android-based phones.

Source: http://www.thehindu.com/business/ecommerce-industry-to-cross-38-billion-this-year-assocham/article8058892.ece

Private equity investors discover gold mine in e-commerce backend

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Private equity investors, who have stayed away from investing in online retail companies, have instead quietly reaped a windfall by backing logistics companies providing back-end support in the e-commerce rush.

In the latest deal, Peepul Capital recorded an over six-fold return on its investment in Ecom Express according to people aware of the transaction. Earlier this year Multiples Alternate Asset Management also made a partial exit from Delhivery, when the company raised fresh capital led by Tiger Global Management.

“These kinds of returns are only possible if there is multiple re-rating of both a company and a sector, which is not very common,” said Prakash Nene, MD at Multiples, who declined to comment on specifics of the deal.

The PE firm made a partial exit after Tiger Global led a round of about Rs 542 crore in the Delhi-based firm in May.

Peepul Capital is estimated to have earned Rs 500 crore on an initial investment of Rs 80 crore in Ecom Express. The firm made an exit when the logistics firm raised fresh capital in a round led by Warburg Pincus according to two people privy to the details.

The returns have been even higher for early seed and angel investors in these two companies, which handle delivery for top online retailers like Flipkart, Amazon and Snapdeal.

According to filings with the ministry of corporate affairs (MCA), seed fund Oliphans Capital bought shares in Ecom Express at around Rs 70 per share in 2013. The fund is estimated to have sold some of these shares to Warburg Pincus during the investment round in June this year. Regulatory filings indicate Warburg — through its unit Eaglebay Investments — paid Rs 2,276 per share of Ecom Express; this would imply that Oliphans netted a return of over 30 times.

“It’s only logical that investment is also about exits,” said Anish Jhaveri, MD at Oliphans, declining to comment on returns made by his firm. “When we invested around $1 million in the company (Ecom Express) there were just four people in front of us who had just quit Blue Dart.”

Ecom Express was founded in 2012 by TA Krishnan, Sanjeev Saxena, K Satyanarayana and Manju Dhawan who had launched the e-tailing business at Blue Dart. The Delhi-based company expects to deliver goods in over 10,000 pin codes covering more than 1,500 towns and cities, across the country in the next few years.

The increasing interest in these companies is driven by the rapid growth in logistic support for online retail. A recent report on the Indian internet sector by brokerage IIFL estimates that the order volume for e-commerce shipments will increase 13x by 2020, with overall volume of e-commerce orders amounting to 2,000 tonnes per day.

Investors are of the view that just as tower companies gained in the telecom boom, the online retail rush will benefit from the back-end support companies.
“There are a lot of enablers which are important from a shadow driving perspective broadly similar to what telecom towers are to telco industry and EPC companies are to infrastructure,” said Sreeni Vudayagiri, investment director at Peepul Capital, a PE firm with $700 million under management which primarily invests in mid-sized consumption and manufacturing businesses.

Source: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Private-equity-investors-discover-gold-mine-in-e-commerce-backend/articleshow/49656651.cms

Income Tax E-Filing Process – At a glance

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Steps for Income Tax E-Filing:

 

 

  1. Select appropriate type of Return Form – ITR and download appropriate Return Form from https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/
  2. Fill your particulars of name, address. PAN Number, date of incorporation (date of birth, in case of individuals), sources of income and the amounts and other details in the ITR return offline and generate a XML file
  3. Register and create a user id/password. User id is always your PAN number.
  4. Login and click on relevant form on left panel and select “Submit Return”
  5. Browse to select XML file and click on “Upload” button
  6. On successful upload, acknowledgement details would be displayed. Click on “Print” to generate printout of acknowledgement/ITR-V Form.
  7. In case the return is digitally signed, on generation of “Acknowledgement” the Return Filing process gets completed. You may take a printout of the Acknowledgement for your records.
  8. Incase the return is not digitally signed, on successful uploading of e-Return, the ITR-V Form would be generated which needs to be printed by the tax payers. This is an acknowledgement cum verification form. The tax payer has to fill-up the verification part and verify the same.
  9. The e-verification can be done using Aadhar number or through online banking. A duly verified ITR-V form should be submitted with the local Income Tax Office within 15 days of filing electronically. This completes the Return filing process for non-digitally signed Returns.
  10. For any assistance in filing the paper copy of the return please contact the Public Relations Officer of the local Income Tax Office.