On Wed, Jul 27, 2011 at 2:44 PM, Nagarjuna G <[email protected]> wrote:

> On Tue, Jul 26, 2011 at 7:12 PM, Terence Monteiro <[email protected]>
> wrote:
> > On Wed, May 25, 2011 at 6:33 PM, Debayan Banerjee <[email protected]>
> > wrote:
> >>
> >> 2011/5/25 Guru गुरु <[email protected]>
> >>>
> >>> Friends
> >>> we have tried to mail/contact the Income Tax dept to request that they
> >>> should not have only MS Excel upload format for the Income tax returns,
> but
> >>> there is no response...
> >>> any ideas / constructive suggestions  on what we could do..
> >>> regards
> >>
> >> http://freedom-matters.in/  -> By Terence Monteiro from DeepRoot Linux.
> He
> >> is the first name on this page http://fosscomm.in/HallOfFame :)
> >
> > Kindly note that the ITR1 form for filing income tax returns is
> successfully
> > migrated to LibreOffice / OpenOffice for this year (Assessment year
> > 2011-2012) and available on the same site, http://freedom-matters.in .
> > Kindly spread the word. Also, I just successfully filed my own returns
> using
> > the migrated spreadsheet using LibreOffice 3.3.2 :-).
> > The goal of this endeavour is that no person who wants to file ITR and
> does
> > not have MS Excel should suffer because of this partiality by the
> > Government. But we are still a long way from this. The problem is, every
> > year the form changes, since tax rules change, so this migration is going
> to
> > be difficult in future. We need to get the Government / IT Department to
> > stop favouring MS Excel. They are only making it harder for non-MS Office
> > users. Kindly lets continue this discussion and effort to put pressure on
> > the concerned people to make a change in this department.
> > --
> > Regards,
> > Terence Monteiro.
> >
>
> Can you prepare a note on the compatibility issues, and the problems
> faced while porting into libreOffice.  If you agree FSF India will use
> your notes and submit a representation with the IT department.
>
>
+1

I have been following these threads (on IT filings) and felt somewhere we
were missing out on a constructive approach to apprise the I-T deptt of
inappropriate design of these forms.

I understand a similar situation exists with Sales Tax, which I have seen
people struggling with, because ST also is nowadays online, and is
intertwined with Excel (impossible to submit without having Excel process
the form).

I can't comment on how well the I-T form works this year, but a year or two
back, I found that without having a very reliable connection, it was
exceedingly risky to click on the links. An interrupted process was
disastrous. Of course, this is not a FOSS issue as such, but compounds
problems if one must also rely on an offline client application working
properly.

-- 
Vickram
Fool On The Hill <http://communicall.wordpress.com>
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