Make optimum use of LTA while holidaying

Well, come summers and already your wife and bachchas would be onto you for that long awaited vacation. If that's not the case, you are pretty lucky:-) in most of the cases, I am sure that's not the dream come true. At least, my dear husband is not so lucky.

So, now let's come to the point. If you have LTA facility available from your company, you must not miss to use it and plan your holiday very well. In simpler terms, Leave Travel Allowance is the cost of travel that is given to employees to travel with in India. If your company provides the facility, then you can claim the same as an exemption from Income tax department of India. It is important that you are on leave from your work during the travel. Also, the point to be noted here is that you can claim only the cost of travel and not the food and accommodation. Also, you can avail LTA only twice in a period of four years. These four years are called a block. The current block is 2010-2013. If somehow, you are not able to claim in this block, you may carry forward this to next block.

So, what qualifies for as the amount available for exemption? If travelling by air, then what can be claimed is the economy fare on the shortest route to destination. If your destination is connected by train, then the exemption allowed is the first class AC fare. And if the destination to be travelled is not connected by air or train, then one has choice to claim an exemption of first class or deluxe class fare (whatever is available) on a public transport.

But don’t worry, even if you choose to travel by a taxi, then you may get the bill issued from the rental company and use it to claim exemption. Even if your company doesn't accept the bill, you can file for a refund at the time from income tax department.

Like in other exemptions, here also your dependent family members can also avail the exemption (Spouse, children, parents and dependent siblings). But please be informed that you must be travelling with your family.  Further, if your spouse also gets LTA from his/her company, then you both claim the LTA allowance independently from your respective companies.  Keep your documents (tickets, boarding pass, car bills etc) of the amount spent on travel very carefully as they need to be submitted while claiming exemption.

That's all. You may start hunting for a good destination and explore our India. Nowadays, travel planners are coming out with many attractive tour packages to woo customers. You can check online, they are available for almost every beautiful destination that you might want to visit. If used wisely and intelligently, you would be able to have a memorable journey and also able to save a big TDS. So, this summer Happy Journey!