So, with a mighty resolution, you decide to get started on your Tax Return this very weekend. You pack your spouse off to a picnic and roll up your sleeves and get ready. You are not afraid of paper, not a bit. You run off to the post office and get all the latest forms and worksheets and sit down at your desk.

So painted below in words is a hypothetical scenario of what would transpire as you head down the glorious path of preparing your Tax Return.

Scenario 1 : HAND-FILLED, SELF-FILED TAX RETURN

1. You go to the post office and pick up the paper booklet with the tax form. Now if you are smart you would have gotten every tax form you know – but you did’nt, so you had to make 2 trips to get all the forms you need.
2. Next… You have to go through the meticulous process of having to fill one box at a time, make sure your entries are okay, make sure you at least copied down everything from your W2 into your . Because each calculation is connected to the next, each box ties to the next. At the end of this painstaking process you arrive at the final number – your refund or the tax you owe.
3. Next step – Find the right address to mail to. Do you know where to mail your tax return. Well its there, its probably in the instructions to the form. Again scan every word until you get the address. Oh Well Eureka!! You just found it.. congratulations. Now put that in an envelope.
4. Walk to the post-office make it before midnight on April 15th and make sure you catch the last snail mail train. Because if it leaves, you are in trouble.. BIG trouble!
5. Well you made it. You rub your hands with joy and pat yourself on the back. Your Tax RETURN IS FINALLY DONE !! Well you just hit the starter to the engine. You just set in motion for the next series of events that will ultimately get you that coveted refund check! Assuming no postal delays – your tax return will get to the IRS in about 2 business days.
6. Next your little piece of work, your tax return, will enter a queue until its routed to the correct department. lets give his a day for making this arduous journey.
7. Next, It gets picked up to be scanned using sophisticated machines called optical scanners which converts your handwritten tax return into a readable computer file.
8. Hiccup 1: If you hand filled your return with pen and paper, if the scanner cannot recognize your handwriting – then the scanning process will reject – and then it would get put into another queue to be manually processed by a human – lets give 4 to 5 days for this to happen.
9. Someone will actually read your tax return and then type the contents manually into a computer. At this point your tax return is now a what is called a raw data file.
10. Now the raw data file will get run through an editing program which will verify the basic details – like did you put in a valid SSN, did you punch in too many zeros in your income eg. you wrote $50000 instead of $5000 in a box on the form.
11. If everything is okay, Your return which is now computer file will then get put into a database along with millions of other tax payers. Your tax return will join thousands of others who e-filed their tax return at this point.
12. From this point on – the process should work like greased lightning. Next a series of computer programs will be run on the database to validate the tax returns. It will compare the data on your file against what your employers filed. So if you incorrectly entered $15200 on your income but the employer sent in $20,000 the process will pull out your tax return for ‘special’ processing.
13. Also your tax return gets pulled up in a random audit checks. The most brilliant minds in the IRS ought to be designing these computer programs to determine which tax return needs to be pulled up for auditing. Perhaps the holy grail of IRS secrets !
14. If you pass step 9, and you have a refund, you will be routed to a program that prints your refund check – give another 1-2 days for this process to complete.
15. If you elected direct deposit, a pay request will be sent to deposit the money into your bank account (1 day)
16. If you did not elect direct deposit, your refund check will go for printing (1 day). Then your refund will go to the mailing department to be sent to you (1-2days). After about (2-3 days) of spending time in the USPS, the check should get to you – again via snail mail, the same way you mailed out your tax return.

Filing an income tax return at the fag end of the year can be a task that is always ridden with tense moments. Not only might one be busy with the various issues that one might have to deal professionally and personally, the fact that at the year end, you are not the only person filing a tax return ensures that you need to stand in a long queues with others.

There is an easy method that could solve all your woes if you are a person who has many important things to attend to which might be as important as or more important than your tax return. The Government of India has come up with a procedure that will enable you to file your tax return online. Thus enabling you to skip many queues and save valuable time. The entire exercise is divided in simple steps to enable you to complete your tax return.

The various steps are present on the internet and if enters the Govt. of India’s Tax Department website by searching for it on Google, one can find the various steps to finish filing an income tax return. They include filling various forms and a nice little E-calculator that allows you to calculate the tax amount to be paid etc. One has to pay online via various banks, the list of all these banks are also available on the govt. website. There is also the concept of E-signature that one has to careful about and one can purchase such E-signatures from various sites. Details of these can be obtained by searching them on any search engine.

After searching the internet for services that can help me reduce the tension of filing tax return. I bumped into many websites that cater to helping one reduce the hassles that one would face while filling online. Some of them offered services such that filing a return can be broken down into three steps. I was impressed by these sites and a many sites also assured that they will provide services that will enable us to get the best refund possible. They do this by asking you to fill in your personal tax details and thus manage to calculate the biggest refund possible. One has to be a bit skeptical about sensitive tax related information being given to some random website so ensure that you choose a credible website by checking if many people have been provided with this service.