In Budget 2021, no changes in the income tax slabs for the individuals were announced by the Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman. However, there are some changes in the rules to ease the compliance of the taxpayers. The term Tax Return itself sounds scary for most of the taxpayers of the country and the process of filing your taxes has always been one of the most feared duties by many. Hence, most of the taxpayers of the country depend upon professionals to help them with their Income Tax Return filing especially during March every year. But the question that arises is who all need professional help while filing their Income Tax Return?

The Budget 2021 had announced t there is an improvement in the ITR services. According to the new rules of the ITR, it provides you with pre-filled ITR forms with the information on dividend, interest, and capital gains already mentioned in the form to ease the process of filing taxes easier for the common man or individual taxpayers.

As Budget 2020 had introduced a new tax regime according to which as a taxpayer, you pay taxes at a slower rate on your income but you will not be entitled to enjoy any deductions and exemptions further.

In the meantime, if we look at the old tax regime, the rates of taxes were higher but it allowed you to make various tax deductions from your salary or income.

So as it is clear from the above table if you just have a salary as your source of income and there are no deductions to be claimed from investments such as medical insurance, donations, or interest on education loans, ELSS to be named a few then you can easily opt for the new tax regime. The tax calculations will be smooth as butter. To further simplify your problems, according to the new budget, the ITR forms now come pre-filled as well making your work simpler and less time-consuming.

Who can do it on your own?

The biggest question that pops in our mind while thinking about the Tax Returns is can we as taxpayers do it on our own? Or is it safer to consult a CA or financial advisor for their help to do the same? Lets try and clear it! So, the following are the people who can file their tax returns on their own:

Single Income Sourced People: This means that salary is your sole income source; you can easily do it by merely putting in the required information in Form 16 provided by your employer.

So who can help the help of the professionals?

Business Income: In case you are self-employed or own a business, it is mandatory to maintain a book of accounts for your business. Additionally, the audit done by a Chartered Accountant is compulsory in cases where the annual turnover is above Rs. 1 Crore (or the gross receipts for a professional are than Rs. 50 lakh).

Tax Complication: if you are planning or have sold a property within five years of purchase and have also claimed tax deductions on the same under Section 80 C for principal payment against your home loan in the recent past. In such cases, all the tax benefits utilized will be added back to your income and taxed in the year of sale. CA has an acumen for dealing with such tax complications as they are fully apprised of the regulatory procedures.

Dearth of Time: in any case, if you have missed filing your income tax and are doing the last-minute filing, it is a good time to hire a CA in order to escape the delay penalty of up to Rs. 10,000 or more of income tax return filing beyond the due date that would be levied on the same.

To sum it up, if your primary source of income happens to be your salary only, you would not need a CA for filing your tax returns. But in cases where you have multiple sources of income or any complication or lack of time, you definitely need a Chartered Accountant to pull you out of such situations to guide you on how to file your income tax return.