Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback? | Hacker News Reader

Show HN: We want to become India's TurboTax. Feedback?

cleartax.in

75 pointsarchitgupta60 comments

Hello Archit, Fellow Indian Geek here. I must say good job on the site, you have managed to make something that is usable. Here is some of my suggestions:

1) I think you need to get a fancy logo. current one is too plain according to me.

2) You are asking customers some sensitive & yet I do not see "Privacy Policy" which is what stopped me from entering PAN No right at first step1. If its already there, highlight it

3) A Strong TOS would indemnify from liability. so, You should add a TOS & make customers agree to it.

4) Any Particular reason Pricing is hidden from Homepage?

5) In welcome email that you send. add few details like name, userid etc. It makes it more original & less fake.

6) I understand you want a "Lean UI" but I think more naked than Lean. so spice it up a bit - add some fancy transitions, better typography(Try webfonts) etc.

7) For entering Date,javascript validation message says: "Please enter date of birth in format: 25/10/1984". isn't giving specific format DD/MM/YYY more accurate. Further, Any reason you are not using Date Picker?

8) Make Login Button more prominent. so user won't try to register again. Your current homepage encourages to everybody to click on that big orange button which is not something you want your existing users should be doing.

9) Taxes aren't something that most people understand. so even after such Intutive UI, people will have questions. so highlight your support methods available(Phone, email etc).

10) Last & most important: Don't just be a pretty interface to official Website. You never know when incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in becomes irctc.co.in. That's too risky business model. Try to add more value to service.

Hope it helps

Thanks for the detailed feedback.

Actually we have a pretty strong privacy policy. I should put it on the front page: http://cleartax.in/meta/privacy

When you sign up, you agree to the terms and conditions. Maybe I should emphasize that a bit more on the signup page: http://cleartax.in/meta/terms

You're welcome!

About TOS & Privacy policy. I couldn't find these after searching. Maybe place it in Footer, FAQ.

agree with almost everything said here. UI needs to feel simpler / more approachable. from what i can see, your service may indeed make taxes easier to file, but your website doesn't feel easier to use than any other website. it should keep its professional feel for sure, but it really needs to feel like its much easier than the competition.

great examples of this: squareup.com, tumblr.com. both of these websites take often tedious and complicated tasks and make them feel ridiculously simple.

Addressing some other points.

About date: In our user testing, date time format of type DD/MM/YYYY was not obvious to a very layman user. If we gave an example, that translated well for most people. Maybe I should add a date time picker.

Support: Will highlight support method. Good idea.

Goal is not to be just a pretty offering. :-)

I cut everything which contributed to an increase in the download size. Speed and small page size has been my driving focus for the UX. I'll look how to optimize on webfonts usage.

While it is good that you kept the UI very lean, you would probably benefit from having a UI/UX guy help you with making the app feel a bit more 'dressed up'. Currently this looks like a developer designed it (I should know, I suffer from the same problem).

Also, having worked on pretty much the exact same product for the French market, one thing I remember people liked was help sections. By that, I mean big long blobs of text that explain the law in detail. On each form page you could display the relevant explainations, and then compile that into a searchable index, and even use that on dedicated pages for SEO purposes.

Oh and maybe you wanna say 'the easy way [to do your taxes]', rather than 'an easy way'.

Mikael,

Can you elaborate a little bit on what you mean by "dressed up". I am looking for feedback here :-)

Yes its mostly a developer driven UI.

About Help Section: I am continuously building out the help section from what people ask on our support aliases.

About SEO: Excellent tip. We have seen traffic come to our few blog entries on certain long tail google queries. So we will be working on this next.

I don't see your email on your profile. Maybe I can pick your brains about what you did for the French Market.

By 'dressed up', I mean choose a set of colors (say 3) and use them for recurring elements in your pages (titles, questions, etc). Try to use colors and white space to visually separate questions, rather than borders (ex: the legend tag uses borders). Use colored backgrounds to give a sense of vertical space. Also, most sites have a footer, that helps give a sense of space too.

I personnaly would stay away from using yellow/blue/pink/green on the same page (at 1:00 in the video).

I can send you my email, but I don't see yours in your profile either :p

Feedback noted.

I just added my email id to the profile. Thanks.

My 2 cents, I really liked the UI. Not so much the UX. Have a common footer at the bottom?

Just to get a clearer sense, how does a footer help? I am a design newbie. :)

Well, to share my own use case. I clicked the big, "Start your Tax return for free" assuming, it would provide me some information before I joined the site. When it didn't, I looked for the FAQ section at the footer, instinctively, but I didn't find it there. I wanted to know more about the site, before I give you my info. Yet even after creating an account, I need to go back to the home page to look at the FAQ! I hope you are getting what I meant here.

Check out this demo video: http://cleartax.in/meta/demo

I wish taxes in the US were this simple. I've been thinking for a long time that some good UI/UX designers should be in charge of redoing the US tax code and forms. If it's too complicated to be usable/understandable by a person without special training, then it shouldn't go in the tax code.

Actually I lived in the US for 5 years. My tax return was fairly simple - but TurboTax asked a lot more questions to maximize deductions and tax credits (which were not applicable to me)

We have made an "opinionated" UI where we show only the common deductions. If you want a not-so-common deduction, you can claim it, but its not part of the regular workflow.

India is attempting to simplify the tax code a whole lot. The government was trying to remove some of the complex tax deductions scenarios. There was a lot of hue and cry from the people affected. The government backed off and kept the deductions.

So its a very tough balancing act I think with tax code reform.

I used this to file my wife's tax return the other day. The experience was quite good (going by Indian standards). Few things based on my experience.

1) There should be a flowchart explaining the steps. Something like Enter information -> Generate ITR V -> Send it to CPC. I was lost when I was asked to post something somewhere and had to look up the process of e-filing on the net.

2) While entering information each text box/textarea has a information on the relevant field of Form 16. That should link to a pic to sample Form 16 highlighting the field. Somethings were ambiguous.

3) More information on what types of Tax Filings are covered. I had to ask you guys to ask about self employed tax filing (and you guys responded very fast, which was great) because I didn't find a FAQ.

4) Information on when do you have to pay and how much. I was never asked for any payment. Which is good, but I'm still kinda confused how that happened. :)

5) The step where it was submitting the information to the income tax website kept timing out. I guess it was maybe because the endpoint was not responding. I tried it the next day during working hours and it went through. You can maybe automate this by giving users an option to automatically retry.

Few questions I had after using it was.

1) Will you guys add support for digital signatures? 2) Will you also allow someone to apply for a digital signature and get it? 3) What is your business model? Do you charge a fee for each filing?

Overall I'd give you a rating of 4 (on a scale of 5). I wish there were more such utility services in India.

Regarding (1), this is a good suggestion and I think it should be on the front page where users can have a quick look before proceeding.

Thank you for the detailed feedback! Very actionable.

1. We'll add the flowchart. This is a very good idea :-)

2. I'll do a sample picture example for form-16

3. Its constantly evolving - but that's no excuse. We'll put up a clear page.

5. Good idea. Feedback noted.

On Questions

1. Digital signatures are coming very soon.

2. We are also going to support buying digital signatures via the website. I still need to figure out how to do it in the least confusing manner :)

3. We plan to sell CA review services of your tax return. Still figuring out whether to charge for each filing.

We'll work hard to get to that 5 out of 5 rating :-)

Just curious: how much would I have to pay to get cleartax pro?

Also, you might want to fix the Mr Bose example: "ClearTax (an Income Tax website) rode to his resuce". I'm not entirely sure that I consider the story to be a positive endorsement, by the way :) It seems too contrived to be true.

Edit: I found out there's a demo video from HN. You might want to make that link a tiny bit more prominent. I love the video, by the way.

About the video: We had a really awesome intern - Ayush who created the video. I am waiting for him to graduate to hire him (for reasons besides shooting a great video)

The story is a bit contrived ;)

We are still arriving at a good pricing model.

Right now we charge from $5.5 to $30 for professional CA support. (CA in India is similar to a CPA in the US)

The wording "Pricing starts from free." seems a little ominous with no actual pricing information up front. How much personal information will I have to fill in before you spring some charges on me?

I'd rather read something like "File for free" if that's what you do at your basic level.

Noted. Basic efiling is free on the website.

I /hope/ Ayush's PAN info in the video is fake :)

In my opinion, your prices are too low on the higher end. A normal tax return preparer charges something like Rs 250 (negotiable, particularly on bulk deals) to around Rs 500 for a simple ITR-1/ITR-2 return. For people who require audited returns, It would be an order of magnitude more. I take it you don't do those :)

Either way, best of luck!

Actually we are starting to get requests for higher-end cases.

Lot of people who earn income from business and profession would like a quick, friendly UI to get their taxes done. Its hard to design though :)

We aren't supporting auditing yet. We have to figure that out.

I will give you 3 quick points : 1) target NRIs and their tax questions. You will not find any more eager paying customers than NRIs who can get help with their taxes and also help in filing . Search the forums and you will will hundreds of queries and questions . Leverage those to come with a custom product offering for them 2) Get some Branding : you will need some solid reputation or word of mouth for people to come to you. Explore tie ups. 3) Get some white hackers to test your site. There is nothing more important than convincing people that they can trust you with important financial data. Have your sites "worked on" thoroughly. :-)

I can give more but not for free ;-)

Pat apinkelefant@gmail.com

Many software professionals in India use this brilliant http://www.ynithya.com/taxcalc/

The above said spreadsheets does not work with open/libre office. If you are looking for openoffice version you can use http://freedom-matters.in/

Two technical things if you are really serious. Localization. Make sure you can support the 22 official languages. And you need a mobile strategy. Mos of your potential users are going to come from. When you consider that brazil had more notebook shipments than India though the population is 1/5th. By my estimation, in India the mobile phone us the Internet.

I don't know what the rules are like in India, but in America you don't have to pay taxes if your income is below a certain amount. I'm guessing that most of the people who don't know English are going to be in that lowest tax bracket.

The rules are similar, and a bit more generous if you're female, or above a certain age. As for the other part of that statement, you'd be surprised at how many people in that bracket can speak English - at least well enough to use a cell phone :)

> you'd be surprised at how many people in that bracket can speak English - at least well enough to use a cell phone :)

I think you missed the point - it's not about whether people in that bracket can speak English, it's that there aren't any people in the tax-paying bracket that can't.

Indeed. In my defense, anecdotal evidence: quite a few people in what we call the super-senior citizen bracket (yes, really) do pay taxes, and more than a few of them don't speak English.

Wish I have seen this last week :). Had to pay 250 bucks to a CA. I tried filing through the income tax website before that.. it looked okay, but you have to jump through a lot of hoops before getting it right. Also, it looked too flaky so didn't dare to go with e-filing..

Honestly, no one pays taxes in India. Your product has no market. I can speak at length about this, but it's part of the reason real estate values in India increase by 30% year over year. Everyone hides their black money in real estate investments.

>"no one pays taxes in India"

I and millions more pay taxes. True about black money, though, but those are business people. Salaried people pay taxes at source, we do not get cash at all.

So they still don't need this app...

You still have to file tax returns. There are many reasons for that. Just to state one, capital gains doesn't come under the ambit of TDS.

Hmmm, I'm not sure what this means, but all you have to do in Greece if you're salaried is to go online and fill the box with the amount of money you made last year. Hardly something you'd need an app for...

It's not just salary which is taxed at source. We have Fixed Deposits which are incurring interest which needs to be declared. We may have made donations which need to be accounted for. Most of us hire a chartered accountant to do the filing. Therefore a software could be of use.

And the people who are employed by tiny companies get paid in only cash, and also do not pay their taxes.

I will admit that "no one" is an exaggeration, but India is one of the worst countries I could think of to try and start a product that helps people figure out their taxes.

Exaggeration and over generalization. You should check with a decent CA on the number of people availing their services to file tax. And just so you know there are 30 million people filing tax returns every year. Quite a low number (in comparison to the population) but definitely not a small market.

Thats not true. In all most all the s/w companies I have come across every single person has paid his taxes. I am from a business family and my dad pays a few lakhs of taxes every year. Please do not make blanket statements like this. Apart from being inaccurate it makes no sense. If no one pays taxes, how does the government run?

Not really. All the salaried employees have to file the returns. Every year this time, it will be a cash festival for CAs and non-CAs who charge around 150-250 to get it done. Of course, it might look like less but if you consider the volumes and throw in word of mouth + a few posters around IT offices, it might work out.

Not true. I filed IT return using this website https://myitreturn.com/default.aspx and it has handful of users

I like what you are doing here, but you need to be upfront with the pricing before making a user sign up. Having to give up some personal information before even knowing what the product will cost me gives me a negative feeling.

I'll put a pricing page up. I can see how its confusing.

Some splash page design thoughts: https://img.skitch.com/20110724-qejdafa6fjpwg3gx86q1xmxdgh.p...

Wow, thanks for taking the time out!

Couple of Questions: - Why do you suggest taking the copyright out?

- I thought hyperlinks should follow typical convention, people are used to clicking them.

I understand now about the hyperlinks. Just checked google.com and it has the same behavior. Blue links and underline on hover. :-)

Feedback noted.

Just a minor note on English: in "Keep a safe electronic copy of your taxrecords with us" tax and records should be two separate words, not one.

Thanks. I'll fix that!

While it's great that you're using HTML5 Boilerplate, you should probably change the default favicon and the pink selection highlight colour :)

Thank you. Feedback noted.

I kinda like the pink :-)

Make sure you load test! www.soasta.com

Add some color to the logo

Don't try to become the "Something of Something" or "Something meets Something". Instead, try to become simply Something. That is all.

It is a simple and useful way to explain "simply something" to someone who is familiar with "Something [and] Something"

"X of Y" is a great pitch starter for a startup. You give the audience something to peg their thoughts on and go from there. Otherwise, potential for confusion before the "aha!" moment is too large.

AirBnB was "We are the eBay of spaces" for a long time. Now that everyone knows AirBnb, everything else is "We are the AirBnB of %s"%('tutoring', 'car rental', 'casual sex', ...).

Do you have a better sentence to get the listener to say "oh I see!" and have their eyes dart all over the place as they think of all the potential uses?

I don't know, this might be good way to explain your idea to a non-investor but for VC's I've read the opposite: http://www.businessinsider.com/entrepreneurs-dont-tell-an-in...

I think instead you can better form your pitch like this: http://techcrunch.com/2010/11/03/madlibs-pitch-adeo-ressi-fo...

Reply on news.ycombinator.com