ExpertDabbler

It is that time of the year again. Oh yeah, we are back to the season of filing tax returns. Please go through my earlier post last year around this time. As an addition, here are some hints/short-cuts to help your cause:

Registration for Efiling:
For starters, please go to the Income tax efiling website and register yourself if you are a new user.

Tips for registering:
Caveat, Your Name in your PAN CARD and your name in the Income-tax database need not match exactly. As a rule, the FIFTH CHARACTER in your PAN number should be the same as your starting alphabet of your last name. For e.g If your name is SENTHIL KUMAR MURUGESAN where MURUGESAN is your father’s name, then

if the 5th letter in your PAN is S, your last name in the Income-tax records is SENTHIL KUMAR.

You would need this detail sorted out before registering in the efiling website.

Paying taxes online:
You can pay your taxes online if you have a bank account. Select your appropriate challan (typically it should be ITNS-280 for individual salaried tax peyers). Select “(0021)INCOME-TAX (OTHER THAN COMPANIES)” under Type of taxes applicable.
Select appropriate TYPES OF PAYMENT (typically its 300 - SELF ASSESSEMENT, please check your case)

You can also check how your name appears in the income tax website by clicking on the online payment link, and by entering the mandatory fields.

Downloading and filling ITRs:
Download the appropriate form here in excel utility.

Tips for filling the ITRs:
ENABLE Macros. Only the green colored cells are input fields. RED labels are mandatory fields. Keep your Form-16 in hand.

If you have only salary income, use ITR-1.
If you have other sources of income, you might want to use ITR-2.
ITR-1 excel sheet is ‘relatively’ easier to use. You will know the true meaning of the word ‘relative’ when you use this :p

Note:
For ITR-2 users, its a huge task to find out SCHEDULE-S. We did informal user testing in our office :P.
SCHEDULE S is available in page 3 BELOW the area where you have signature/verification (row 78).

There is a bug in the ADDRESS FIELD in the INCOME FROM HOUSE PROPERTY Sheet in ITR-2. If the fields do not populate, chances are you might want to remove some information in your ‘Address of the property’ field. Please ensure the fields once entered gets populated elsewhere in the document. For e.g Amounts entered in the TDS sheet should auto-populate in the PART B sheets.

Please click on ‘validate’ button in each sheet to see if you are in the right direction.

Once you are done, please click the ‘Generate’ button to generate the XML file and upload the XML file into the efiling website.
You will be able to download a ITR-V document in PDF which requires a password to open. The password is nothing but a concatenation of PAN number in lowercase + your Date of Birth in DDMMYYYY format (no / or - in between).

Assuming you do not have a Digital signature certificate, Please take a print out, and send the same in ordinary post to the following address:

Income Tax Department ,
CPC, Post Bag No - 1,
Electronic City Post Office,
Bangalore - 560100, Karnataka BY ORDINARY POST ONLY
(no registered post, speed post, courier business) within thirty days after the date of transmitting the data electronically.

Hope this helps. Happy eFiling.

Please let me know if you have any difficulty.
I have done two filings in the last two years and have helped a few folks at work. Will be glad to help, if possible.

After analyzing close to 25 India trips by several US makkals I know, I think there is a definite pattern. They visit because

a) They are getting married,
b) Their X is getting married
c) Their X’s X is getting married
d) They need to get their visa extensions stamped
e) A loved one is sick
f) They want to sort out their property related matters

As a by-product, they might also want to catch up with friends when time permits.

The most important thing is that the list is not exhaustive. And its never for a single major reason, unless its an emergency which is out of scope of our discussions since thats not a planned trip.

In general, the more reasons, the better. I will tonsure my head in tirupathi if proven otherwise in at least five cases. Coming to think of it, this makes sense. After all, who would take three weeks off and travel 15000 miles just because he felt like eating kamarkatt and thengai barfi?

Also their immediate family’s ability to manufacture plans in an overnight is legendary.

Payyanai, Pennai partha sandhosham results in
- a pilgrimage trip (Tirupathi, Shirdi, Sringeri, Kumbakonam taluks)
- seeing distant relatives in distant places
- visiting ancestral home

So their wish list, their families’ wish list and everything in between will be packed in this three week time slot.

What gets priority?
Since visa extension stamping is a non-negotiable item, that will be the first priority.
Next comes attending weddings which is the main reason they are here.
Then comes must-see relatives who will create a furore if they are missed. After all who wants ‘US la irukom -ngra thimiru’ tag?

Then comes long seen friends. Of course they too will grumble if proper time is not allotted for but they can be handled with ‘economies of scale’. Call five or ten folks, make a plan for an evening dinner and voila, you are meeting all of them in a three hour time frame. Pure economies of scale. The other less important acquaintances can be talked over phone, or SMS-ed, or emailed or just plain ignored. And it makes sense too. I’d do the same.

The only time which I suspect is not yet accounted for and squeezed for some activity is their time in the bathroom. Suffice to say three weeks will fly before they get breathing time which in all likelihood they’d only get when they board their return Lufthansa.

In essence, there are as many deadlines to meet and commitments to keep as in work. This is just different sort of work in a different country and you are spending for it.

So what is my problem with it?

- They almost always tend to underestimate how busy they’d be here. And they announce to, i don’t know, like half of chennai, these five words ‘Chennai la meet pannalaam machi’ via mails, phones etc. People publish itineraries, train ticket PNR numbers, ask me to book etc. In the end its all the same. It is as fundamental as man’s ‘incentive caused bias’.

People who I know ever since I started wearing underwear get to talk to me in their India trips when,

- they visit me at mid-night
- I visit their relative’s place at mid-night
- I make a trip to cbe over the weekend.

And even then, the best, heart-felt conversations I’ve ever had with these folks is over phone when they are in the US. Never when they visit India. I used to fume and grumble when ignored. Not anymore. I know how it goes nowadays. Being
thirty something does make a difference I tell you. More on that later.

My overnight trip to this sleepy little town in North Malabar was for eating Ela Adai, enjoying the train journey, and to attend my friend’s engagement. I also realized that little or no industrial development keeps the region serene and less polluted. Maybe there is a reason for all the strikes and hartals in Kerala which free market ‘bourgeois’ economists can never understand, it is part of the communist’s noble agenda of keeping the green in Kerala.

Morning breakfast was served in the hotel. I was offered two white hard substances which looked like Idly. Later on I was told that was indeed Idly. No wonder it looked like idly then. My stomach, which can enlarge and contract admirably based on the quality of food, went to crash diet mode immediately.

As for the actual ceremony, ‘Everything should be as simple as possible, but no simpler’ may have been uttered by Einstein but this set of Keralites take it very religiously, at least in their ceremonies. The actual engagement ceremony had all the bare essential elements but not a bit more. The boy and girl were made to sit in ordinary chairs, some person took out a mike and read out a statement, it could’ve easily passed for a press release announcing the launch of a mixie in the region. The content was again kept to bare minimum - the agenda of the meet, the boy and the girl’s name and address preceded with the parents name, the date of the wedding and the approval of the elders, followed by one ‘thattu’ exchange, one ring exchange, and the standard ’stand erect and stare’ photo session with select relatives. That was it. The whole function got over in about half an hour.

Lunch was served and I realized that the much dreaded kerala rice is not to be dreaded at all. What needs to be dreaded though is the ‘Maida’ Chappathi. Another noteworthy mention is the way Keralites fold the leaves after the meal - it is always away from them, quite unlike south tamil nadu where this can imply something offensive. Brahmin customs require the leaves be kept open after meals. To each his own.

Post-lunch session required a visit to the girl’s ‘tharavad’, about half an hour from the engagement venue, and that was where I got the super delicious, awesome, heavenly, ‘Ela Adai’. Wow. Well, there are some things in life which more than compensates for all the troubles. I think Keralites should be given a honorary Nobel for contributing Ela Adai to mankind.

Last but not the least, the tickets for the trip was booked through Cleartrip.com which was an absolute dream, in stark contrast to the IRCTC website which is an absolute nightmare. One caveat though - the tickets are a bit more expensive than IRCTC, cleartrip makes some money in the process and I did not mind in this occasion. Here is someone making money purely on design and ease of use. Design is business. Online train ticket booking is taken to the next level thanks to the likes of cleartrip, makemytrip and yatra entering this space.

All in all, the trip was a welcome relief from the hot and humid chennai for two days.

PS:Updated based on comments from Hrush

Is mindless browsing any good? I was talking to my friend about this yesterday and wanted to post it as well.

My take is that it’s about as healthy as any mindless activity could possibly be. To be fair, I have done my share of vetti browsing. So much so I have some scars around my eyes in the form of dark circles. I am a recent convert to the opposite camp. And like all new converts, I am only too happy to proselytize.

My current method works like this.

- when at home, keep the laptop closed.
- when I get the itch to open it, think about reasons for browsing

If I am not able to come up with five good reasons, my laptop stays shut. I wait till I reach five. At any given 24 hours, I allow myself a maximum of 10 good reasons. Checking mails is not a sufficient enough reason.

- close the laptop again once all the reasons are exhausted.

Like all good rationing, this method results in moderation in consumption. I have time to do some activities which folks elder to me had time for in abundance - walks, shopping, socializing, reading etc.

Net as an infrastructure takes access to information to frightening heights. But some processing has to happen in our heads for the information to be of any use. I think accessing information should be a much more selective and conscious exercise than what it is currently with me and most of the folks I know. We are over-emphasizing information and under-weight on processing that information. Unlimited access to information is no substitute for wisdom. And browsing is no substitute for thinking.

As for the effectiveness of my strategy, habits die hard and I am fighting myself here. But at least I am fighting. This post is an attempt to pump-in these ideas to my head first. How about you?

http://www.gladwell.com/1998/1998_08_17_a_harris.htm

If you are a parent, you might want to read this.