ITR Filing in Pune (AY 2026-27): The Process, the Fees, and Why a CA Still Beats the App

Every July, the same conversation repeats in our Baner office. Someone files their own return on a free portal in twenty minutes, feels relieved — and then, four months later, an intimation under Section 143(1) lands in their inbox asking why their declared income does not match what the department already knows.

The return was not wrong because the person was careless. It was wrong because filing a return in 2026 is no longer a data-entry job. It is a reconciliation job. And reconciliation is exactly where an app stops and a Chartered Accountant starts.

This is a plain-English guide to how ITR filing actually works for the Assessment Year 2026-27 (Financial Year 2025-26), what the process looks like when you file through us, and how our fees are structured — so there are no surprises on either side.

First, the one date that matters

For most individuals — salaried employees, pensioners, and small taxpayers whose accounts do not need an audit — the due date to file your return for AY 2026-27 is 31 July 2026.

File after that and two things happen, both avoidable: a late-filing fee under Section 234F, and interest under Section 234A on any unpaid tax. There is a deeper cost too — file late and you lose the right to carry forward certain losses (capital losses, business losses) that could have saved you tax for up to eight years. Early filing is not about being a model citizen. It is about keeping options that the deadline quietly takes away.

Why "the app already pre-filled everything" is a trap

The income-tax portal now pre-fills your return from your AIS (Annual Information Statement), TIS (Taxpayer Information Summary) and Form 26AS. This feels helpful. It is also where most self-filed returns go wrong.

The pre-filled data is the department's view of your year — reported by your bank, your broker, your employer, your mutual fund registrar. It is frequently incomplete, occasionally wrong, and never tailored to you. We routinely see:

• Interest income that appears twice because a bank reported it under two heads.
• Share or mutual-fund sales pulled in at the wrong cost, inflating your capital gain.
• A high-value transaction flagged that has a perfectly innocent explanation — which you must give in the return, not after the notice.

An app will let you accept the pre-filled figures and move on. A CA's job is to sit your actual documents next to the AIS and find the gaps before the department does. We wrote a full walkthrough of this in AIS, TIS and Form 26AS: reconcile these before you file — it is the single highest-value hour of the whole exercise.

The five judgement calls an app cannot make for you

A return is not just what you earned. It is a set of decisions, and each one has a right and a wrong answer for your specific situation:

1. Which ITR form. File ITR-1 when you needed ITR-2, and the return is marked defective under Section 139(9). Salary, capital gains, F&O, NRI status and presumptive income each push you to a different form. Our ITR form selector guide shows the decision tree.
2. Old regime or new. This is a real calculation, not a default. For someone with a home loan, 80C investments and HRA, the old regime can still win — but only after the maths is run both ways. An app picks the default; we pick the lower number.
3. Capital gains, structured correctly. Equity, mutual funds, F&O and property each follow different rules, and the cost base is where errors hide. If you sold property, the 12.5% vs 20% question alone can move your tax by lakhs.
4. Residential status, for anyone with a foreign link. Resident, RNOR or Non-Resident decides whether India taxes only your Indian income or your global income. Get it wrong and you either overpay or invite a notice — see how residential status works.
5. The disclosures that carry penalties, not just tax. Foreign assets (Schedule FA), presumptive income under Section 44AD — these are not optional fields. Some carry penalties far larger than the tax itself.

None of these is data entry. All of them are advice.

How we file your return — the process

When you file through RDA, the process is deliberately simple on your side and thorough on ours:

1. Share your documents — on WhatsApp or email, whatever is easier. Photos or PDFs are fine. We will tell you exactly which documents apply to you, so you are never guessing.
2. We reconcile your documents against your AIS, TIS and 26AS, and flag anything that does not match.
3. We run the regime comparison and structure your capital gains, deductions and disclosures for the lowest defensible tax.
4. You review and approve a clear summary — income, tax, refund or payable — before anything is filed. Nothing goes to the department without your sign-off.
5. We file and you e-verify. A return is not complete until it is verified within 30 days of filing. We make sure that last step actually happens, because an unverified return is treated as never filed.

Most straightforward returns are completed within the same week your documents are in. The earlier in the season you start, the calmer it is for everyone.

How our fees work

We quote a fixed fee, upfront, before we start — never an open-ended hourly meter. The fee depends on one honest variable: how complex your return is.

• A single Form 16 with standard deductions is at the simpler, lower end.
• Multiple employers, capital gains, two house properties, business or professional income, F&O, or NRI residency and foreign-asset reporting each add genuine work, and the fee reflects that.

You will know your fee before any work begins, and it will not change unless your situation turns out to be materially different from what we were told. We would rather quote you fairly once than surprise you later — that is the whole point of working with a firm instead of a faceless app.

A note on cheap filing services: a return that costs you nothing to file can cost you a great deal to defend. The fee for a notice reply, a rectification, or a revised return is almost always larger than the fee for filing it right the first time.

Common mistakes we fix every season

• Accepting the pre-filled AIS without checking it. The most common, and the most expensive.
• Choosing the wrong regime by default and overpaying — or missing the Form 10-IEA step needed to opt for the old regime in time.
• Filing the wrong ITR form, making the return defective.
• Forgetting to e-verify within 30 days, so a filed return silently becomes invalid.
• Missing a disclosure — foreign shares, RSUs, a second house — that the department can already see.

Frequently asked questions

What is the last date to file my ITR for AY 2026-27? For most individuals whose accounts do not require an audit, it is 31 July 2026. Filing later attracts a fee under Section 234F and interest under Section 234A.

Can't I just file it myself on the income-tax portal? You can — the portal is free and open to everyone. The question is not whether you can enter the numbers, but whether the regime choice, the AIS reconciliation, the capital-gains treatment and the disclosures are correct. That is where returns go wrong, and that is what we do.

What documents do I need to give you? It depends on your profile, but typically Form 16, your AIS and TIS, bank and FD interest details, capital gains statements if you sold shares or property, home-loan interest, and any foreign income or asset details. We send you a checklist tailored to your situation so you are never over-collecting.

How much does it cost to file through a CA in Pune? We charge a fixed fee, quoted upfront, based on the complexity of your return — a simple salaried return sits at the lower end, while capital gains, business income or NRI filings involve more work and are priced accordingly. You approve the fee before we begin.

How long does it take? Most returns are completed within the same week we receive your documents, provided they are complete. Filing early in the season keeps it unhurried and gives us room to optimise rather than rush.

Do you handle NRI and capital-gains returns? Yes. Residency determination, DTAA relief, Schedule FA disclosure, and capital gains on shares, mutual funds and property are core to our practice, not add-ons.

File it once, file it right

The portal will always be there, and for the simplest returns it is enough. But the moment your year has a capital gain, a job switch, a home loan, foreign shares, or a number in your AIS you cannot explain — that is the moment a return stops being data entry and becomes advice.

If you would rather your AY 2026-27 return be filed accurately, optimised for the lower tax, and verified before the rush — book your filing slot at rdatax.in, or message our team on WhatsApp and we will share your document checklist the same day.

Written by CA Rahul Dang, Founder & Practice Lead, RDA Tax Advisory Services Pvt Ltd, Baner, Pune.