Terms of service

These terms govern the services provided by Pathak Associates, of Ranchi, Jharkhand, to you as a client. They apply from the moment you accept a quote from us.

Where we have signed a separate engagement letter with you, that letter takes precedence over anything here that conflicts with it.

We provide assisted tax and compliance services: we prepare and file returns, applications and statutory forms on your behalf, and we advise on the matters within the scope you have engaged us for.

We are not a software product and this is not self-service filing. A qualified member of our team does the work and is accountable for it.

We do not provide investment advice, legal representation in court, or audit services where independence rules prevent us from acting.

You provide complete and accurate information, and you do so in time for the deadline concerned. We prepare filings from what you give us; we do not independently audit or verify it unless the engagement expressly says so.

This matters more than it sounds. A return is signed on your behalf on the basis of your information, and the legal responsibility for its contents remains yours under the Income Tax Act. If something material is not disclosed to us, the consequences fall on you.

You also agree to tell us promptly if anything you have told us turns out to be wrong or incomplete.

We will tell you what we need and by when. Where documents arrive too late for us to meet a statutory deadline, we will say so at the time and we are not responsible for the consequences of that delay.

Statutory deadlines are set by the government and are outside our control, as are portal outages and departmental processing times. We cannot guarantee an outcome that depends on a third party acting.

Fees are quoted per engagement before any work starts, and the quoted price is fixed for the scope described in it. We do not publish standard prices because the work varies materially between clients, and a single published figure would be wrong for most of them.

Where something genuinely outside the quoted scope emerges, we will tell you before doing that work and you decide whether to proceed. We do not add charges after the fact.

Government fees, statutory charges and third-party costs — ROC filing fees, trademark fees, DSC costs — are separate from our professional fee and are payable in addition unless the quote says otherwise.

Work begins once payment is confirmed. Where a payment is not matched to our bank statement we will tell you why rather than simply holding the work.

Everything you tell us is confidential and is not disclosed to anyone outside the firm except as set out in our privacy policy — to the authority with which we are filing on your behalf, to the service providers who run our infrastructure under confidentiality obligations, or where the law compels us.

That obligation continues after the engagement ends.

We are responsible for doing our work with the care and skill reasonably expected of a professional firm. Where we get something wrong, we will correct it, and we will bear the cost of correcting it.

Our liability for any single engagement is limited to the fees paid for that engagement, except where the law does not permit such a limit — and nothing here limits liability for fraud or for anything else that cannot lawfully be excluded.

We are not liable for penalties, interest or losses arising from information that was not disclosed to us, from documents provided too late, or from a decision you took against our advice.

You may end an engagement at any time. Where work has not started, fees are refunded in full; where it has, our refund policy sets out how the refund is assessed.

We may decline or end an engagement where we are asked to do something we consider unlawful or unethical, where information is withheld from us, or where fees remain unpaid. We will say which, and we will hand over your documents.

Your records remain yours. On request we will provide copies of everything filed on your behalf.

These terms are governed by the laws of India. The courts at Ranchi, Jharkhand have jurisdiction over any dispute arising from them.

We would far rather resolve a complaint directly. If something has gone wrong, tell us — most matters are settled in a phone call.