Return of the Tiger

Today I am feeling adventurous enough, so I decided to file my Income Tax return.... all by myself. The last year return filing was total disaster. I think I procrastinated for too long, and then to add to the problem I am lazy, so my last year's return was filed in January. That makes it about seven months late. But then, when you late, number of months don't really matter.

:-)

Anyway, that was what happened last time. But this time as a pleasant contrast, I decided to file my return on time. I wanted to hire somebody to do it for me. But since I am in Himachal right now, getting access to such agents is not easy. I saw couple of mails floating about (in our company newsgroup) online return filing. And I decided that today is the day to try it.

Now, I am doing this in parallel. I mean if I want to record my true feellings, I need to blog while actually filing the return. And thankfully the site is so enough to do this parallely.

6-30 PM Opened https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in
6-35 PM Page is visible... damn I need to open this in IE. Due to some problem or other these sites never work in firefox. Ahem!!
6-40 PM So IE it is. Page is loaded and I franatically look for the e-pay or e-file or something like that.
6-42 PM I see downloads and I jump for it.
6-50 PM I downloaded ITR-1 which is for individual or HUF (which is an excel sheet with macros)
6-52 PM I start filling in details. The form looks tedious and geeky. It says - Green cells are for data entry. Don not cut paste while dataentry. ITR--
:-(
7-00 PM Damn, what is my ward number? I have no clue. I don't have copies of last years return with me. I am soooooooo lost!
7-10 PM My brother told me to get the ward number from https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/knowpan/knowpan.jsp
7-20 PM This page is taking forever to display result.
7-22 PM OMG, I think I downloaded wrong ITR form. The form says it's for 2008-09. Gah! need to click on e-Filing A.Y. 2007-08
7-25 PM Ok, I got the "right" form now. Also I downloaded itr1_excel_guide just in case. Now that has caused problem and that IE window is not opening.
7-30 PM I still don't know the ward number since the page is still not done.
7-35 PM I killed the IE and tried to open the excel guide link again.
7-40 PM Damn, Damn Damn, It opened the pdf document, but now my mouse has stopped moving. I am using only keyboard to navigate right now.
7-45 PM Thankfully things became better when the whole pdf download was complete. I should have saved the file instead of opening it in IE. :-( Anyway, I did that now.
7.47 PM So now I have the right form and the guide as well. I am all set.
7-55 PM This form is equally frightful and the guide file is scarier that the form. I tried to read the guide but abondoned the idea after going through 7 pgaes. (It has total 54 pages).
7-57 PM This was trying enough to make me hungry. /me goes off to eat something.
8-15 PM Burp! I am back to tackle the forms now.
8-25 PM Excel sheet has five tabs. I am done with the first tab. The guide says click on next button which is seen in the top portion of the form.
8-27 PM The button is not getting pressed. After 8-9 attempts I somehow managed to click the button. It switched to second tab and flashed this
"The cell or chart you are trying to change is protected and therefore read-only."
8-30 PM I still decide to go ahead and try it.
8-31 PM Ok, I am able to fill is details. I think some cells are marked read-only by IT dept. and they are throwing warning.
8-50 PM Sigh.... I am done with filling in details as per Form 16A
9-00 PM Huh, next page is asking for tax paid details. My form 16 doesnt have bank name and branch name. Do I need to fill in this?
9-05 PM I decided to validate the pages which are already filled. OMG, page 2 shows refund of 823426 Rs.
9-20 PM I have checked everything twice already and still don't understand how the self-assessment tax is calculated in this excel sheet.
9-30 PM I have no clue about how to fix it.
10-00 PM I am going to check with some CA tomorrow.

:-(