Editorial policy

People make real decisions based on what they read about tax and money. These are the standards we hold ourselves to.

Accuracy comes first

We base every factual statement on primary sources wherever possible: Acts of Parliament, rules, notifications and circulars, and guidance published by the Income Tax Department, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC), the GST portal and other official bodies. We list these sources at the end of each guide. Where official guidance is unclear, or reputable sources disagree, we say so rather than pick a side quietly.

One law, one year, clearly labelled

The Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced the Income-tax Act, 1961 from 1 April 2026. The two Acts use different section numbers and some different terms. Each page states which law and which year it covers, and we do not mix the two on one page. When a rule changes, we update the page and its review date, or we clearly mark the page as covering an earlier year.

Plain language

We write for intelligent readers who are not tax professionals. We explain technical terms the first time we use them, prefer short sentences, and use worked examples with realistic figures. Examples are illustrations, not advice for your situation.

Original work

Our guides are written and edited by people. We may use software, including AI tools, to help with research, drafting or checking, but a human editor is responsible for every published page, and no tax figure on FinanceOpen comes from an AI model’s estimate. Calculator results come only from written, version-controlled rules with automated tests.

Expert review

We invite qualified professionals, such as Chartered Accountants, to review our guides and calculators. A page shows a reviewer’s name only when that reviewer has approved the exact version you are reading. If we change the reviewed text, sources or FAQs afterwards, the reviewer’s name is removed until they approve the new version. Pages that have not been reviewed say so. Read more about our review process.

Dates you can trust

Each guide shows when it was first published and when its content was last substantively reviewed. We do not change dates for cosmetic edits. We schedule reviews after each Union Budget and whenever a relevant law, rule or form changes.

Independence

Advertisers, sponsors and partners have no say over what we write or how our calculators work. We will never make a calculator less accurate to steer you towards a paid product or service. See our advertising disclosure.

Corrections

If we get something wrong, we fix it and, for anything that could have affected a reader’s decision, we add a note explaining what changed. See our corrections policy.