ExpertDabbler

Update:
Filed my return on time after paying the due taxes “FINALLY’ arrived at my auditor. Thanks to online tax payment and online return filing process, gone are the days when people were forced to stand in long queues.

I am back from discussing with my auditor who takes care of my tax issues. Maybe it is just me, but i am having a hard time with the auditors for the second year in a row.

My expectation is that I will submit all my details well in advance. I expect my auditor to clearly do all the calculations and spell out my tax liability. And be able to answer my questions, if any.

Last year, I consulted an auditor in Madurai, who was not a Chartered Accountant. Let us just say he is the lodge vaithiyar equivalent in the auditor fraternity. He coolly classified my mom’s family pension as ‘Salary income’. I just happened to be awake at the wrong time and searched google, so caught this mistake.

So this year, I caught hold of a proper Chartered Accountant. But this year was even more interesting. I had bought and sold a bunch of shares. There are capital gains and capital loss. And within these
there are two sub categories - long term and short term. For a grand total of eleven stocks, it would take hardly a day to figure out the net tax liability. But the reality is, i gave all the details three weeks back, and am still waiting to get an error free statement.

It is not that the auditor does not know. It is just that he asks his articled clerk to do the work, who obviously is learning. First, he had the dates wrong for about 4 transactions. He entered 2008 as 2009. Some had a sale transaction date mentioned ‘Nov 12 2010′. Some had the buy date later than the sale date, even when i had sold all the shares of that company.

But I would not blame the articled clerk, I would blame the auditor for not verifying the details. I have already traveled back and forth to Vadapalani area twice for this purpose. First I was told I had to pay 8000 rupees tax later when I probed, I figured a loss was entered as a profit, the dialogue came to ‘ 4000 rupees tax, sir’ , which later came to ‘2000 rupees tax’ and eventually ‘no tax liability’.

What if I had nil tax knowledge and had just blindly believed these folks? I would’ve paid 8000 Rs. tax unnecessarily. How many semi-literate small business men are like this in our country who will rely solely on the auditor? I totally detest that cavalier attitude.

I came back home, asking him to prepare a revised, error free statement so that I can file the return online myself.
And tomorrow is the last date to file the Income tax return for individual tax payer. ‘Beware the auditor, for they know a lot more than you in tax matters, and so can make more mistakes’ has been my lesson till now.

Coming to think of it, I think there are some professions For e.g. science, medicine - neuro surgery, aircraft pilot etc, where an amateur does not stand a chance, and we just have to have that faith in the expert. On the other hand, in commercial and legal matters, we as consumers of professional services should do our own due diligence to avoid being taken for a ride.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010 at 11:32 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.