Preparing tax returns at click of mouse

Lamingo Systems, a Bangalore based technology start-up firm promoted by two entrepreneurs — Navin Kumar and his wife Monika Rungta — has launched eLagaan.com in this current tax filing season, a portal which promises to prepare the tax returns easy to be filed both electronically and in paper mode.

Kumar, a software engineer and his wife who is a fellow of chartered accountant have developed the site with support of a team of 20 people including 10 software engineers and eight chartered accountants, to solve the problems of individual tax payers. The couple says that the idea to launch such a portal came based on their bitter experience in filing their owns returns and feedback of some friends and relatives.

“The whole process of collecting the Form 16 to fixing up appointment with the CA and filing the returns makes many people occupied for almost a month. The idea to start eLagaan.com came to our mind with an aim of enabling the common man to prepare their returns on their own. We have made all efforts to make the filing of returns quite simple, in return for a nominal amount for tax payers beyond a certain level of income,” said Kumar, a MTech and a chartered financial analyst.

Usually, a tax payer gives all the details about hisôher income, expenses and savings to a tax expert, who then calculates taxes and prepares tax returns. No tax expert can save any taxes after giving the details, as return is generally prepared after March 31. eLagaan follows similar model, and calculates and prepares the tax return based on the details provided by the assessees about their income, expenses and savings. Additionally, the site also suggests the user about any tax savings that could have been possible and any other possible steps they should take to save taxes for the current year.

The company offers free return preparation services to tax payers whose total income is less than Rs 3.5 lakh per month under the Plus category. For privilege accounts including ‘premium’ and ‘Royale’, the company charge Rs 149 and Rs 249 respectively.

The company claims to be getting about 2,000-2,500 visits for day.