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Popcorn Infotech: Improving Financial Affairs with an Efficient way of handling Tax Compliance

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Suchit Saraf,Director

Suchit Saraf

Director

For a growing business, tax compliance can feel like drinking from a fire hose. From filing GST returns with continuously changing laws to calculating income tax provisions for financial statements, the sheer volume of tax requirements can overwhelm all of the most robust tax departments. Moreover, most startups are not even aware of various licenses they need to do business in India. International expansion adds an extra layer of complexity, requiring specialized knowledge and experience in global tax compliance.

40% of our customers are first time income tax or GST return filers. This comes with its own challenges of gaining confidence and understanding the nuances. Also, many customers after GST registration don't file their returns. Hence, training to ensure compliance is the biggest challenge. The focus of tax assessments is gradually shifting from micro issues (such as procedural disallowances) to issue- based and concept-based reviews. The professionals with wide ranging experience and in-depth knowledge help in navigating the challenges.

Popcorn Infotech is among the fastest growing companies in the business of taxation and compliances, through a network of retail outlets (Suvidha Kendras). The organization has over 5000 Suvidha Kendras across India, with outlets in Andaman & Nicobar Islands, Ladakh, and Pondicherry. Popcorn Infotech has a dedicated training department and whenever any new retail outlet joins, every head of department calls the center personally and explains about all the services and compliances to be followed by the customers.

Communication is an important aspect of the service and it has a dedicated Relationship Manager assigned to each center to handle problems. The directors of the company bring in varied expertise to handles the legal aspects of the business along with the overall management of the company, supported by the dedicated team of tax consultants who bring in experiences across various domains.

The organization has done over 10,000 GST registrations across India. "We understand the requirements by the department better
than anyone else, which reflects in our service delivery as well. Similarly, we have experience of over 500 company formations, and are proud to say that we incorporate a private limited company within 3 days, which is very rare" signifies Suchit Saraf, Director at Popcorn Infotech.

Ensuring the Finest Service with Experience across Various Domain
Significantly, 2017 was a historic year when GST came into force in India, one of the biggest overhauls ever in indirect tax regime. Popcorn Infotech realized the opportunity that would bring and decided to focus on the Small and Medium Businesses to help them migrate into new tax regime. The organization decided to open Suvidha Kendras across India and in a matter of less than 6 months it registered over 1,000 taxpayers in GST. In 3 years, it has gradually expanded the business into all compliances and government registrations offering over 200 services to the customers. Today the organization has over 5,000 outlets and has serviced more than 50000 customers. The team has vast experience across many services like income tax returns, TDS returns, professional Tax, EPF, ESIC and ROC returns.

At Popcorn Infotech learning never stops through continuous engagement with various Government departments. "We recently had a client who was over 60 years, from a small village, she had retired around 10 years back and not wanted to withdraw her pension contribution she had paid over the years of her work. However, Government systems had gone online in these 10 years and she had no way to get an online EPF account number (UAN). Due to Covid lockdown she couldn't even visit the local EPF offices for assistance. No local consultants were able to help her. When she visited our center, our team took her case in top priority and generated her UAN Number and helped her withdraw her pension amount, which helped her tremendously" signifies Suchit Saraf.

Furthermore, Popcorn Infotech has invested heavily in technology to ensure efficient delivery of services. It has made alert systems for the team to regularly follow up with customers in case of any delay in delivery of documents. Any delay beyond stipulated time for each service is directly alerted to the senior management and strong action is taken against it in case of unjustified delays. If anyone is dissatisfied with the service, they can call on the helpline number, or contact the Relationship manager, or even email on a dedicated email ID which is directly monitored by the directors of the company.

Popcorn Infotech is a team dedicated to handle complains and issues at any time of the day and this is what differentiates the organization from the competitors, focusing very strongly on service delivery. Popcorn Infotech is the oldest and biggest company in the domain of taxation compliances through retail outlets. It is the only company in the market who does not take any joining or franchise fees from the outlets.

Consequently, many services has gone online, some of them still require physical visits to the departments. The organization has been able to provide this in some geography. Expanding it across India requires new collaborations with local experts, to focus on ensuring the clients with services in the remotest of the locations. Popcorn Infotech is keenly looking forward in setting up of the whitelable ATMs, corporate insurance licenses, International Money Transfer and many more.

The biggest achievement of the organization is being able to make more than 5000 entrepreneurs in underdeveloped regions, helping many customers to get their work done easily in a very reasonable price. "This is how Popcorn Infotech measure the success, on the basis of lives we have touched. Solving a challenge faced by our customer gives us immense happiness and we will continue to work towards improvising each day" concludes Suchit Saraf.