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Filing income tax returns before the deadline is quite a tedious task for many, particularly for those individuals and small companies, who, for a variety of reasons, have little access to an ‘affordable’ professional Charted Accountant or Company Secretary to help them in e-filing.
Apps such as OTJ247 and UrbanClap are now catering to this demographic.
“On an average, in this season of filing IT returns, we have been receiving around 100 queries from individuals and 30-40 from SMEs. We pass these on to CAs/CSs on our platform who, in turn, submit a quotation to the client,” Suhail Vadgaokar, Vice-President - Customer and Brand Experience, UrbanClap, a multi-service online aggregator, told BusinessLine .
UrbanClap, founded in November 2014, got a lot of traction in 2015-16 from both individuals and SMEs, he said.
“CAs/CSs are not on rolls and work for others, too. In the case of individuals, they typically charge ₹5,000-15,000 for filing a return, and we currently get around ₹500 as our facilitation fee. In case of SMEs, their and our charges vary on factors such as capital investment.”
Nearly 600 professional CAs/CSs offer their services on the UrbanClap platform, which currently operates in seven cities — Delhi-NCR, Mumbai, Pune, Bengaluru, Chennai, Hyderabad and Ahmedabad. It plans to expand to Kolkata and other cities soon, he said.
Prashant Rai, founder, OTJ247.com, said his Bengaluru-based firm launched its platform in February 2016. “We have got over 300 clients until now”
OTJ247 charges 10 per cent of the fee for facilitation.
“Most people don’t like to share their sensitive financial details with unknown CAs and others. We thoroughly check the credentials of all CAs and CSs before they board our platform,” Rai said.
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