Users will routinely ignore or misinterpret instructions like this. It takes an extra hour or two of work, but either do the three dropdown boxes or give them a free-form text field which is fairly intelligent with a suggestion that tells them how to phrase things and then attempts to discern their intent when they write things in a way which is not ambiguous.
For example, 3/25/1982 and 25/3/1982 and 1982 Mar 25 are all trivially recognizable and unambiguous. Should someone type in 3 4 82, two hours of work will let you say "We really care about your tax return being accurate so we want to check: is your birth date [March 4th, 1982], [April 3rd, 1982] or [something else?]"
You would additionally benefit from microcopy on this page to the general effect of "Your data is totally secure -- we use bank grade encryption [and blah blah blah]. You can review your return before we send it to the tax authorities."
You are absolutely correct about users ignoring and mis-interpreting instructions, we constantly struggle with this. The suggestion is very good.
I find the multi-year-dropdown cumbersome, but maybe it is more functional and there's less probability of a mistake! One minor thing I'd like to add is users in India typically write date in the form of DD/mm/YYYY.
I don't mind putting in the date really. 25/3/1982 seems to be really unambiguous and clear - well a date control could be added, but I don't think it is needed.
I have questions on passwords though. What's the reason you made this? Also what could be the worst case in sharing the password with an unknown website?
We use SNI SSL certificate (running on appharbor). On Windows XP and IE-8, there are issues with certificate detection. (There's no issue with the actual transport layer security - All data transmission is over SSL. In case you are interested in the details: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Server_Name_Indication )
I am looking into the IE-9 issue. I wasn't able to reproduce on the Windows XP SP3 machine I have with me.
One concern would be about the confidentiality of the data. You say it is govt approved, but perhaps you can add some explanation/commitment that there will not be any compromise with the data which is very important for the users.
This is true. They have practically everything on you right from your full name to company you work for, to PAN card info and your salary and investments.
Even if I trust _you_ how sure can I be that you won't get hacked. May we ask you how good is your security? Do you store anything? Encrypted? More details would be awesome.
I'm the security nerd in my group, and if it passes my eyes, I'll DEFINITELY recommend this to everyone I know.
Note some bugs. I entered a bad URL (https://cleartax.in/badURL) and got this error:
Server Error in '/' Application.
The IControllerFactory 'AT.Web2.Infrastructure.NinjectControllerFactory' did not return a controller for the name 'badURL'.
Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code.
Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException: The IControllerFactory 'AT.Web2.Infrastructure.NinjectControllerFactory' did not return a controller for the name 'badURL'
What is your privacy policy? Couldn't find on your site. That's a ton of data you will have which is worth a lot of money if sold raw/processed. Somebody already asked you about security of data, so am not bringing that up.
Do you have plans to mine the salary data? you will have access(though only system based, not human) to large chunk of salary information which you can mine to build either user profiles (e.g. identify people with good disposable income, who is paying how much for insurance, number of people submitting medical expenses) etc.
There is an automatic feature which the user can run which shows certain tax deductions which he/she missed out on. We are going to turn this feature on soon.
We don't do advertising to our users. TurboTax in the US is a good bellwether - they have been super ethical and never use data to advertise or sell user information. We have similar privacy policies and very high regard for customer trust.
42 comments
[ 4.2 ms ] story [ 82.1 ms ] threadWe have tried to make tax filing simpler for users, where they can upload the form-16 and get 90% done with their tax return preparation.
Here's a sample Form-16 explained: http://cleartax.in/Guide/understandingform16
http://cleartax.in/Meta/FreeIncomeTaxReturnFiling
So glad you liked it! It is rare that people read it ;)
http://cleartax.in/meta/love is the story
Users will routinely ignore or misinterpret instructions like this. It takes an extra hour or two of work, but either do the three dropdown boxes or give them a free-form text field which is fairly intelligent with a suggestion that tells them how to phrase things and then attempts to discern their intent when they write things in a way which is not ambiguous.
For example, 3/25/1982 and 25/3/1982 and 1982 Mar 25 are all trivially recognizable and unambiguous. Should someone type in 3 4 82, two hours of work will let you say "We really care about your tax return being accurate so we want to check: is your birth date [March 4th, 1982], [April 3rd, 1982] or [something else?]"
You would additionally benefit from microcopy on this page to the general effect of "Your data is totally secure -- we use bank grade encryption [and blah blah blah]. You can review your return before we send it to the tax authorities."
You are absolutely correct about users ignoring and mis-interpreting instructions, we constantly struggle with this. The suggestion is very good.
I find the multi-year-dropdown cumbersome, but maybe it is more functional and there's less probability of a mistake! One minor thing I'd like to add is users in India typically write date in the form of DD/mm/YYYY.
I have questions on passwords though. What's the reason you made this? Also what could be the worst case in sharing the password with an unknown website?
http://cleartax.in/Guide/understandingform16
(Its not a sample PDF unfortunately, but it shows what a typical Form-16 looks like)
In IE9 I don't get any error, but the page look horrible (don't use the css?).
In Chrome it works without problems.
I am looking into the IE-9 issue. I wasn't able to reproduce on the Windows XP SP3 machine I have with me.
Even if I trust _you_ how sure can I be that you won't get hacked. May we ask you how good is your security? Do you store anything? Encrypted? More details would be awesome.
I'm the security nerd in my group, and if it passes my eyes, I'll DEFINITELY recommend this to everyone I know.
Registrant Name:Gupta
Registrant Street1:C block Vikaspuri
Registrant Phone:+091.1111111111
It looks... scammy.
You can take a look at the "About Us" and the "Contact Us" page. We mention about our company's name and the physical address of the headquarters.
Our company's details can be verified easily at the MCA (ministry of company affairs) website.
- It talks about the Salary + perks + allowances the employer gave the employee.
- It mentions the Tax Deducted at source by the employer for depositing to the government.
Note some bugs. I entered a bad URL (https://cleartax.in/badURL) and got this error: Server Error in '/' Application. The IControllerFactory 'AT.Web2.Infrastructure.NinjectControllerFactory' did not return a controller for the name 'badURL'. Description: An unhandled exception occurred during the execution of the current web request. Please review the stack trace for more information about the error and where it originated in the code. Exception Details: System.InvalidOperationException: The IControllerFactory 'AT.Web2.Infrastructure.NinjectControllerFactory' did not return a controller for the name 'badURL'
Thank you for the feedback. We need to serve a better 404 page. We'll do this shortly.
Hosting wise we run on Appharbor, which is kind of like heroku for .NET.
http://cleartax.in/Meta/Privacy
Our privacy policy is linked from the home page.
We don't do advertising to our users. TurboTax in the US is a good bellwether - they have been super ethical and never use data to advertise or sell user information. We have similar privacy policies and very high regard for customer trust.