Founder income is rarely clean: salary, ESOP perquisites, capital gains from selling shares, maybe consulting or interest income, sometimes across years. For a genuinely tangled return, tax-filing platforms with an assisted or expert-help tier can pull it together, and for anything with ESOPs or a secondary sale it is usually worth having a CA review it rather than doing it fully DIY. Keep the source documents as you go: Form 16, your broker's capital gains statement, ESOP allotment and sale records, and Form 26AS or the AIS to cross-check what the tax department already sees. The messier your year, the more a small review fee saves you in notices later. Indian tax rules, slabs, and ESOP treatment change often and depend on your exact situation, so treat online guides as background and confirm your final numbers with a qualified CA before you file.
A curated summary to orient you, not advice. The resources below are the real value.
3 hand-picked resources, 3 India-specific, 3 link-checked. Pick how you want to dig in.
Why we picked it A practical India-first reference for keeping personal and company finances (and their tax) cleanly separate.
From ClearTax by ClearTax
Open cleartax.in →Why we picked it The India-specific piece: perquisite tax at exercise, capital gains at sale, and the startup deferral, with worked examples in rupees.
From ClearTax by ClearTax
Open cleartax.in →Why we picked it The India reference on short vs long term capital gains, holding periods, and rates for equity, funds, and property, so you know the tax before you sell.
From ClearTax by ClearTax
Open cleartax.in →
