I-T dept offers help in filling returns at door steps

In a major drive to help taxpayers file returns, the Income Tax Department on Tuesday offered to provide expert services at door-steps in the four metros and some major cities like Bangalore, Jaipur and Patna.

Also, it has started 'Online Tax Help' to provide professional services to resolve tax-filing related queries by tax experts through email or phone within 24 hours.

To avail these facilities, a taxpayer will have to visit the website trpscheme.com. Under the 'Register for Home Visit' initiative, Tax Return Preparer (TRP) will visit the residence of the assessee to provide assistance in return filing.

Taxpayers who choose to register for home visit, will be asked to indicate in short the help required and a convenient date and time when the TRP can visit them for assistance.

"The help desk will forward the query of the taxpayer to the nearest available TRP and fix the appointment

telephonically," an official statement said.

It said this is aimed at facilitating taxpayers in filing their return, thereby reducing their cost of compliance.

It further said the TRPs are allowed to collect fee from the taxpayers as per the TRP notification subject to a maximum of Rs 250 per return preparation.

The facility for home visit by TRPs has been presently made available in few cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Patna. The facility will be extended to more cities during the next phase.

Taxpayers can call on the TRP scheme call centre at 1800-10-23738 for more information.

The TRP scheme is an initiative of the I-T Department to help small and marginal tax payers in filing their income tax returns.

The TRPs are self-employed graduates, trained  by the department for filing of returns as well as quarterly TDS statements.

The department also provides incentive to the TRPs for preparing of returns of tax payers.