With passage of time, the E-governance has evolved significantly and in recent times we witnessed the launch of Digital India Programme with the vision to transform India into a digitally empowered society and knowledge economy. Also read how to avoid getting income tax notice

Indian population at large has also learnt to evolve and adapt to the need of the hour. Use of Net banking and Debit/credit cards have widened the horizons of E-commerce resulting into online payment of taxes and e-Filing of Income Tax Returns.

Income Tax Department stats show that total number of returns e-Filed during FY 2013-14 was 29.68 million as compared to the 21.48 million during FY 2012-13, which shows staggering growth rate of more than 39%. This number grew by almost 16% during FY 2014-15 and is expected to grow by 20% in FY 2015-16.

So if you have not e-Filed your return yet, but wanting to do so since your friends brag about it all the time, try some of these tips to get you jumpstart on your e-filing and help you maximize your returns this Tax season.

File Electronically, Take Control

With Government's efforts, the processing time of returns has shortened drastically which has also resulted into faster processing of refunds.

And if you e-File, processing time would reduce even further. E-Filing transfers your tax returns to Income Tax Department instantaneously, which prevents it from being misplaced, lost or even forgotten.

E-Filing is hassle free

If you are filing your taxes for the first time, you don't have to pay thousands of rupees to have them prepared. You are most likely one of the 3 Crore Individual Tax filers in India who has a straightforward tax return (ITR-1/2A/2/3) so there is no reason to pay someone your hard earned money.

To ease the e-Filing process further, two updates came from the department.

First major update was the introduction of the ITR 2A. So far, the individuals with multiple house properties or exempt income exceeding Rs. 5000 had to file the lengthy ITR 2 instead ITR 1.

To counter this issue, department has introduced ITR 2A which can be filed by an individual who has multiple house properties and exempt income exceeding Rs. 5000.

Department also reduced the basic form size to 3 pages for ITR 2A and ITR 2. You can select the additional schedules if applicable to you and the rest will be eliminated.

Second update came recently with the introduction of EVC (Electronic Verification Code) mechanism. So far, tax filers had send the signed ITR V (Acknowledgement) to CPC at Bangaluru within 120 days of e-Filing.

This was an added burden and sometimes resulted into non processing of the returns and further missing out on the precious refunds.

But with introduction of EVC, the tax filers can generate EVC through different mediums like incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in, Automatic Teller Machines (ATMs) & even Net Banking facilities of specified banks.

You will receive the EVC on your registered mobile or email with Income tax. You simply have to provide it while filing your return or you could even apply the same for the returns you've already e-Filed. And that's it. No more paper trails.

No more sending the physically signed copy to CPC Bangalore. And what more? Before you even know it your return would be processed and you'll get the refunds in your bank account without any hassle.

Anand Satyapanthi is a Qualified Chartered Accountant and Co founder at Quicko.com, an online tax preparation software.

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