January is a time for stress for professionals all over India. The financial year is about to end, and the deadline of Jan 31st to submit your investment proofs hangs heavily around your neck.
For context, rent receipts are required by the employer to prove to the Income Tax dept, that you have indeed paid rent, to claim HRA tax exemption or House Rental Allowance, a part of your salary that’s given to account for your housing expenses. While investment declarations are made anytime during the financial year, proofs need to be submitted by January 31st of the assessment year. ( January 31st, 2016 for assessment year 2016-2017)
While seasoned employees do it like a pro, a lot of first timers can get awfully confused and get stuck at various stages.
However, aiding professionals to simplify their tax filing and investment proofs is online tax efiling startup Cleartax. Their latest offering is an online rent receipt calculator.
While there is no established format for the rent receipts and most people improvise with Word documents and such, this offering particularly makes it easy as one is required to input only a few details like name, amount of rent and name of landlord, and the system generates the rent receipts within a few seconds.
This product will likely solve a lot of issues around the already complicated tax issues for professionals in India.