Employees' savings quotient peaks with digitised tax benefits

Savings, virtually any amount, could be considered a luxury in today’s spendthrift culture. With prices of products and services increasing often, every avenue that is available to save in taxes is deemed beneficial for all salaried professionals.

Lack of sound investment decisions could eventually drain your wallet. Therefore, smart decisions are indispensable to cruise through rigorous tax policies established by the government.

As taxation laws keep changing, working professionals have to find new ways to save more of their hard-earned money. And, with expert advice, relevant information and insight, salaried professionals can ace their tax-saving strategy.

As the digital revolution, has begun to transform trade and commerce in our country, digitised solutions are fast becoming technology essentials for almost all businesses and used as a means to increase savings too.

Digital channel

Many transactions are made via apps, and most people are dependent on the digital channel for information consumption and sharing. But the reach of it doesn’t end here. While the impact of digitisation is widespread, there’s still tremendous potential for salaried professionals to experience the monetary, convenience and efficiency benefits associated with it.

Traditionally, most working professionals depend on the government-provided tax break of Rs 1.5 lakh as detailed under Section 80C. However, there are several other allowances and perquisites that the government offers which are specially designed to help salaried professionals save more tax. With these, salaried professionals could save up to Rs 80,000 over and above the traditional Rs. 1.5 lakh in taxes. 

Tax benefits solutions haven’t been extensively adopted by organisations due to inherent hindrances associated with them. Exhaustive paperwork involved in managing claims is time-consuming.

Furthermore, many more manual tasks make implementing employee benefits challenging and costly. However, with the availability of digitised tax benefits solutions, today, organisations can ensure a seamless, hassle-free approach to running employee benefits while helping them save income tax substantially.

While salaried professionals make every attempt to save through carefully-selected investment schemes, there’s still scope for more. And, one of the chief vehicles that let professionals take advantage of such tax incentives is through digitised tax benefits solutions.

Digitised tax benefits solutions are specially designed to increase savings by applying tested permutations and combinations. By leveraging the inherent advantage of cloud-based technology, employers and employees, alike, can enjoy greater convenience that is offered by digitised benefits.

Salaried professionals

A plethora of benefits associated with commonly-used products and services fall under perquisites and allowances section stated in the Income Tax act. Therefore, if these tax-saving options are used, salaried professionals could save up to Rs 80,000 in taxes per year.

Something as basic as meal vouchers, a tax-saving instrument, offered by corporates to employees could help save up to Rs 7,920 in taxes per year. The conventional paper vouchers to buy meals are dimmed out with the modern advantages of digitised meal vouchers, which can be sent to employees within minutes. They are easy to use, and saves professionals the hassle of carrying around bulky coupon booklets.

Similarly, medical and communications reimbursements offer up to Rs 4,500 and Rs 9,000 of savings.

Also, one could save Rs 7,200 in expenses related to fuel and travel with digitised benefits.

Claiming leave travel allowance digitally is another way of saving substantially in taxes. Not only can professionals save up to 30% in taxes on expenses incurred on transport, but also adopt a paperless approach to submitting all types of travel documents.

The same benefit exists for books and periodicals allowance as well. Moreover, verifications are completed faster, claims are processed efficiently and grants are issued instantly. 

The burden of storing bills and filing them could be avoided by merely submitting soft copies of receipts. And, it only gets better by making claims on-the-go, thereby, negating long waiting periods to receive settlements.

The whole process of reimbursements can be simplified with apps and web portals that are used to submit claims using phones. This can be completed within minutes, giving back time, otherwise wasted in a lot of manual tasks and paperwork.

The emergence of cloud technology is a blessing for all. And, digitised benefits solutions forge a partnership with an array of products and services that lead to substantial savings. By transitioning organisational processes to a cloud-based platform, organisations too could reap a harvest of resource time and cost savings by eliminating inefficient tasks. Quite clearly, digitised tax benefits offer a giant share of monetary benefits, and they are here to stay.

(The writer is CEO and  co-founder  of Zeta)