Avoiding fringe benefit tax

Some tips which my company's CA firm had given us a while back. Very interesting

• The fringe benefit tax can be avoided if you own a car and the company pays for maintenance and petrol bills.
• The most profitable way to claim HRA is to ask the company to take a house on lease, which is owned by any of your relatives. If it's your parents, who don't have any income, it works completely to your advantage. On one hand, you claim HRA and they, having zero income, don't have to pay any tax. In fact, even if they have some income, but less than the stipulated base limit of Rs 220,000 a year (assuming they are retired), they would gain from the situation. The maximum benefit occurs when the rent is over 20 per cent of your salary.
• When gift vouchers are given, insist on taking them under the employee welfare scheme.
• Mobile phone bills are considered a perquisite and taxed, causing your office to fret a lot. You can again offer tax counselling by suggesting a simple trick. The mobile phone bills can be placed under "recurring operative expenditure" head. All taxes are eliminated at one stroke.
• At home, leased phone landlines installed at the company's behest and cost, allows you to get rid of paying tax on calls.
• Travel expenses and hotel stays are taxed under FBT. In fact, even a conference to discuss reducing tax incidence on perquisites will also be taxed! :-) However, by not showing the expenditure as conference/seminar and calling it "convention" would remove the tax burden.
• The office may want to give meals, breakfast or tiffin, but FBT fear precludes an employer from extending this perquisite to staff. Why not have an office "food and beverage" account? Show the claim in the income tax return.The FBT will not apply, at all.
• Finally, soft furnishings for a house (such as curtains and table cloth), which give the abode a decent appearance for entertaining guests who drop in for official duties, can be shown as expenses. They also qualify for tax exemption.