file-itr

An agent skill that helps any Indian individual taxpayer prepare and e-file an Income Tax Return (ITR-1/2/3/4) — under either the old or the new tax regime.

Install · Use · What it covers · Scope · Repo structure · Contributing

What people say

_{Replies from this X thread and a LinkedIn post by Chandan Kumar, who filed a complicated return (large tax-free gratuity, dividends from demerged unlisted shares) with the skill.}

About

It reconciles salary + freelance/creator/business income + capital gains + interest into a correct, fully-verified return, compares both regimes and proactively asks for the deduction proofs that lower tax legally, fills the portal schedule-by-schedule, fixes validation defects, and guides the user through payment and e-verification.

Its aim is the lowest legal tax — claim every deduction the user genuinely has and pick the cheaper regime — never to fabricate or inflate anything.

The skill lives in skills/itr-india/, distilled from a real end-to-end ITR-3 filing (salaried + content-creator under 44ADA + listed-share STCG + bank interest) and generalised to cover both regimes and all common filer types.

⚠️ Not professional tax advice. This skill makes a return accurate and defensible, not minimised at any cost. Indian tax rules change every assessment year — always re-confirm current-year slabs, limits, and forms. The taxpayer remains responsible for the figures filed. The agent will never enter your password/OTP, make the payment, or submit/e-verify on your behalf — those are your actions by design.

Install

Claude Cowork (desktop)

1. Download itr-india.skill from this repo.
2. In Cowork, open the chat and use the "Save skill" button that appears when a .skill file is shared, or go to Settings → Capabilities → Skills and add it. (You can also drag the .skill file into the chat and click Save skill.)
3. The skill now appears in your skills list and triggers automatically when you talk about filing Indian taxes.

Claude Code (CLI)

Skills live under a skills/ directory that Claude Code reads. Either:

A) Clone into your project's skills folder

git clone https://github.com/shivprime94/file-itr.git
mkdir -p .claude/skills
cp -r file-itr/skills/itr-india .claude/skills/

B) Install for all projects (user-level)

git clone https://github.com/shivprime94/file-itr.git
mkdir -p ~/.claude/skills
cp -r file-itr/skills/itr-india ~/.claude/skills/

Restart Claude Code (or start a new session) and confirm with /skills (or however your version lists skills). The skill triggers on ITR/tax-filing requests.

Note: unlike the .skill bundle, cp -r also copies engine/, evals/, and conftest.py — the skill doesn't load any of these, so it's harmless to have them, but you don't need them for the skill to work.

Any other Claude Agent SDK / custom agent

Place the skills/itr-india/ folder wherever your agent loads skills from (the directory containing per-skill folders, each with a SKILL.md). The agent reads the YAML frontmatter description to decide when to trigger, and loads SKILL.md + the references/ files as needed.

Use

Once installed, just talk to your agent naturally, e.g.:

• "Help me file my ITR for FY 2025-26 — I'm salaried and also do freelance content work, and I sold some shares this year."
• "I'm a YouTuber, new tax regime, can you do my income tax return in India?"
• "Reconcile my 26AS and AIS and tell me my total income and tax."
• "I'm stuck on a validation error on the income tax portal for my 44ADA return."
• "I traded crypto on an Indian exchange — made profit on some coins, lost on others, 1% TDS was deducted. How is it taxed and which ITR form?"
• "My father is 67, gets pension + FD interest, paid health insurance — old or new regime, and how much tax?"
• "I have 80C, a home loan and HRA — is the old or new regime cheaper for me?"

The agent will gather your documents, reconcile income, compute tax, walk the portal with you, and stop at the payment/submit/e-verify steps for you to complete.

What you'll need to provide

Form 16(s), Form 26AS, AIS/TIS, bank statements for the financial year, any broker/capital-gains statement, and any platform payout files (Stripe/YouTube/ X/etc.). For the portal steps, you log in yourself and the agent drives the form.

What it covers

• Picking the right form (ITR-1/2/3/4) and comparing old vs new regime (115BAC / Form 10-IEA) on the user's real numbers to choose the cheaper one.
• Old-regime deduction catalogue (80C, 80D, 80CCD/NPS, HRA, home-loan interest, 80G, 80E, 80TTA/TTB, …) and a proactive checklist of documents to ask for so no legitimate deduction is missed.
• Reconciling income to source documents (Form 16, 26AS, AIS, bank statements, platform payout files) — one number per head, each tied to a document.
• Presumptive taxation for creators/freelancers/small business (44AD/44ADA, CBDT code 16021).
• Capital gains on listed equity/MF/property (111A/112A special rates, quarterly breakup for 234C), virtual digital assets/crypto (115BBH), and interest/dividends in Schedule OS.
• Independent tax computation (both regimes) to verify the portal's math — backed by a separately tested rule engine (see Repository structure below).
• Driving the e-filing portal, with workarounds for its known quirks (logout pop-ups, mat-select dropdowns, the trailing-zero bug, silent schedule un-confirmation, and the no-account balance-sheet validation defect).
• Handing off payment, submission, and e-verification cleanly.

Scope and limitations

• The verified engine (skills/itr-india/engine/) is scoped to AY 2026-27, resident individuals, both regimes, and structurally refuses — fail-loud, not a guess — non-residents, business/house-property/foreign income, Chapter VI-A deductions beyond what's modeled, AMT, clubbing provisions, and Section 89 relief. See engine/README.md for the exact boundary.
• The skill's reference material (skills/itr-india/references/) covers domestic salary/freelance/business income, capital gains, deductions, and VDA/crypto in depth. It recognises RNOR/non-resident status and foreign assets/income as real scenarios — they're documented ITR-4 disqualifiers that route to ITR-2/3 — but there's no dedicated Schedule FA/FSI/TR reference yet, so that coverage is thinner than the domestic-filer material and should be verified independently or with a CA.
• India personal income tax only — not GST, TDS returns (24Q/26Q), or company/firm returns.
• Complex F&O/intraday trading, tax-audit applicability, and multi-year brought-forward-loss continuity should be verified with a CA — the skill helps reconcile and file, it doesn't replace judgment on edge cases.

Repository structure

• skills/itr-india/ — the skill itself. Start with SKILL.md (workflow + judgment), then references/ for regime, deduction, presumptive-taxation, capital-gains/VDA, and portal-workflow detail. This is what ships inside itr-india.skill.
• skills/itr-india/engine/ — a separate, tested Python engine (scope check → bucketing → set-off → rates → interest) that independently recomputes the tax to audit the skill's numbers. It is not part of the installable bundle. See its own README, and run its tests with pytest skills/itr-india/engine/tests -v.
• itr-india.skill — the zipped, one-click-install bundle. CI rebuilds it deterministically whenever SKILL.md, references/, or evals/ change — never hand-edit it.
• scripts/ — bundle build tooling.
• .github/workflows/ — CI.

Star History

Contributing

Bug reports, corrected reference material, and engine improvements are welcome. See CONTRIBUTING.md for dev setup, running the test suite, and commit/PR conventions.

License

MIT — see LICENSE.

Disclaimer

This project is provided "as is", without warranty of any kind. It is not a substitute for a chartered accountant or a registered tax practitioner. Verify every figure before filing. The authors are not liable for any filing made using this skill.