Taxmantra.com Launches Free Startup Dedicated Tax Helpline Number to Help Startups Resolve Their Tax Issues

In the last few years, there is a definite upsurge in the startup eco-system of India with central as well as state governments seemingly interested in the eco-system as never seen before. Recently, Government of Karnataka had proposed to bring in Startups Act, wherein startups would be eligible for various regulatory relaxations. The central government has already announced INR 10,000 Crore corpus for startups and has unveiled its digital India plans.  However, not everything seems to be shining, especially on the compliance part. Taxmantra.com, a tax compliance firm had conducted a survey on the startups compliance status check. The results of the survey were not only surprising but very scary for the business community. The survey suggests that every 2nd startup gets income tax notice for tax demands or for non-compliance in its first three years, three out of seven startups default on annual company law filings and two out of four startups incur unnecessary pay-out by way of interests and penalties. A web application startup from Bangalore recently had to pay a fine of Rs. 1.75 lakh for TDS non-compliance. Their intention was never to evade compliances but the challenge was to handle all the compliance initially, especially when there wasn’t enough information about taxes readily available. An IT security startup from Mumbai had similar concerns. They got a notice from ROC Mumbai about having defaulted annual ROC filings. Firstly, they had no idea that companies need to do ROC annual filings mandatorily. Ultimately during severe cash crunch, they had to pay 10 times the normal fees. Clearly the single fact which comes out of the survey is that the intention of the startups is never to evade compliances. However, lack of awareness is the primary reason for the non-compliances resulting in getting penalised to a large extent. Yourstory.com, Nasscom.com, Moneycontrol.com, Headstart.in and entrepreneur.com are some of startup centric platforms helping startups gather information on various topics. Business and technology schools too have started such initiatives, one such initiative being E-cell by IIT-Kharagpur. However, startups would ideally require personalised hand-holding on the compliances and day-to-day tax issues. Taxmantra.com to help this cause has launched a free startup dedicated tax helpline number (+91-9038335433) wherein startups and businesses can freely call for resolution of their tax issues. They also plan to launch startup-centric webinars, Google Hangouts and Skype Sessions to help startups and businesses. This initiative aims to protect businesses from unnecessary taxes, penalties by keeping businesses in perfect compliance as they grow, especially in their early days when they are most vulnerable. This newly launched program should be handy, especially as 30th September is the due date for tax and regulatory compliances for FY 2013-14 and 31st October being the due date for Company law compliances. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________