India Law Simplified — Free AI Legal, Tax & GST Help for India

Free, no-signup tools and plain-English guides for Indian citizens, CAs and advocates — income-tax and GST calculators, an IPC → BNS 2023 section converter, AI agents for legal, tax and GST questions, document makers and compliance help — built for AY 2026-27 and the new BNS/BNSS/BSA 2023 codes.

Popular free tools

Guides & help

IPC → BNS 2023: the sections people actually look up

The Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita replaced the Indian Penal Code on 1 July 2024, and while most offences survived largely intact, the numbering changed completely. Which code applies to a given matter depends on when the offence was committed, not on today's date, so an FIR registered in 2023 continues under the IPC while one registered now is under the BNS — and both numbers will appear in the papers of a case that straddles the change.

Three renumbering traps cause more confusion than the rest combined, because the same number means different things in the two codes. BNS 109 is attempt to murder, while IPC 109 was abetment. BNS 352 is intentional insult, while IPC 352 was assault. And BNS 296 is obscene acts — the offence that used to be IPC 294 — while BNS 294 is a different provision about selling obscene material. A citation that gives only the number, without naming the statute, is ambiguous in all three cases.

Offences against the person

The homicide and hurt provisions moved as a block into Sections 100 to 125. Two of them gained mandatory minimum sentences that the IPC never had, which is the kind of change a renumbering table will not tell you about.

Offences against women

The BNS gathered these into a single sequence from Section 74 to Section 79, where the IPC had inserted them piecemeal over decades. The provisions themselves are largely carried over from the 2013 amendments, but two thresholds changed, and one wholly new offence was created.

Property, dishonesty and documents

This is where the BNS made the most substantive changes rather than merely renumbering. Several maximum sentences rose, one threshold that had stood unchanged since 1860 was finally replaced, and community service entered Indian criminal law for the first time.

Speech, public order and general principles

Sedition is the single largest change in the recodification: IPC 124A was repealed outright rather than renumbered, and the provision enacted in its place is differently worded and considerably more severely punished. The group-liability rules, by contrast, were carried over almost verbatim, which means the existing Supreme Court authority on them still applies.

The full IPC → BNS converter covers every mapped section, and each section page sets out the ingredients of the offence, what changed and what did not, the evidence that usually decides such cases, and the documents worth securing early. What none of them attempt is to state whether an offence is cognizable or bailable: that classification lives in the First Schedule to the Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita rather than in the BNS itself, and stating it wrongly would mislead a reader at exactly the moment it matters most.

What the three AI agents actually do

The AI Advocate maps your facts to the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam — the codes that replaced the IPC, CrPC and Evidence Act on 1 July 2024 — and works through FIRs, bail, cheque bounce under section 138 and replies to legal notices. The tax agent covers income tax for AY 2026-27: which regime is cheaper on your own numbers, which ITR form applies, and how to answer a 143(1) or 148 notice. The GST agent covers registration thresholds, GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B, input tax credit against GSTR-2B, and DRC-01 replies. Each argues the strongest lawful position for you rather than returning a neutral summary, and each cites the section so you can check it.

Why answers here cite the section

Indian tax and legal information goes stale faster than almost anything else online. Slab rates, the section 87A rebate, standard deduction, capital-gains rates and TDS thresholds change with each Finance Act, and criminal section numbers changed wholesale in 2024. A page that quotes a figure without saying which assessment year it belongs to is unverifiable. Everything here is stated for AY 2026-27 and anchored to the provision it comes from, so you can confirm it against the bare Act rather than taking it on trust.

What this is not

This is an AI-assisted research and drafting tool, not a law firm or a CA firm, and using it creates no professional relationship. The AI cannot appear in court, certify a document, conduct a statutory audit or take responsibility for advice, and it can be wrong — most often on figures that change annually and on recently amended provisions. Treat what you read as well-informed research to verify, and engage a licensed advocate or chartered accountant where the amount or the risk justifies it. Documents you upload are processed in real time and are not stored; the privacy policy sets out which sub-processors see your content and where the security stops short of end-to-end encryption.

Free, and what that means

The calculators, guides and agents are free with no signup, because understanding your own legal or tax position should not require paying a professional fee first — a paywall in front of a filing deadline helps nobody. Help is available in English, Hindi, Tamil and Telugu, and the statutory constants behind the calculators are the same ones used in the written guidance, so a rate cannot be current in one place and stale in the other.

What changed recently, and what it means for you

Three shifts account for most of the confusion in Indian tax and law right now, and a great deal of what is still published online predates all of them. The criminal codes changed first: the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita, Bharatiya Nagarik Suraksha Sanhita and Bharatiya Sakshya Adhiniyam replaced the Indian Penal Code, the Criminal Procedure Code and the Evidence Act from 1 July 2024. Most offences carried over largely intact, but the numbering changed completely — cheating moved from IPC 420 to BNS 318, criminal breach of trust from IPC 406 to BNS 316, and anticipatory bail from CrPC 438 to BNSS 482. Which code applies depends on when the offence occurred rather than on today's date, so older matters continue under the old codes.

Income tax changed next. The new regime under section 115BAC is now the default, which means inaction chooses it: tax on taxable income up to ₹12 lakh comes to nil because of the section 87A rebate, and salaried taxpayers get a ₹75,000 standard deduction. What the new regime removes is almost everything else — 80C, 80D, HRA and the interest deduction on a self-occupied home. The old regime still wins where those deductions are genuinely large, typically when a home loan and rent are both in play, and salaried filers may choose afresh each year.

GST changed most recently. Following the 56th GST Council meeting the rate structure was restructured with effect from 22 September 2025: the general slabs are now Nil, 5% and 18%, the 12% and 28% slabs were removed, and a 40% rate applies to a short list of demerit goods. Individual life and health insurance became exempt in the same round, having previously carried 18%; group policies did not. Any rate recalled from before that date may simply be the old one, and that includes rates quoted by older software and by AI tools trained on earlier material.

Where to start, depending on why you are here

If you are holding a notice, start with the notice decoder — it tells you what the document is, how serious it is, what the deadline is and what to do next, which is usually more useful than reading about the section in the abstract. If a deadline is approaching, the compliance calendar puts income-tax, GST, TDS and ROC dates in one view. If you need a number rather than an explanation, the calculators run the computation directly — regime comparison, capital gains, GST, gratuity, HRA and the penalty and interest sections.

If you are starting or running a business, the services directory covers registration and ongoing compliance, and the company registration guide sets out what the structures actually cost to maintain rather than to form. If your question is criminal or civil rather than fiscal, the BNS guide covers FIRs, arrest rights, bail and the cheque-bounce sequence under section 138. And if you would rather ask than read, the AI agents take a description of your situation and work from the current sections.

The dates that catch people out

Most of the penalties people pay are for timing rather than for substance. For individuals not subject to audit the income-tax return is due on 31 July, and filing late attracts a fee under section 234F of ₹5,000, reduced to ₹1,000 where total income does not exceed ₹5 lakh — charged even when no tax is owed, because the trigger is the delay rather than the balance. The larger cost is usually invisible: the right to carry capital and business losses forward for eight years is conditional on filing by the due date, so a loss-making year is precisely the year in which filing on time matters most. Filing is also not the last step, since a return left unverified for thirty days is treated as never filed at all.

Advance tax runs during the year rather than after it, in four cumulative instalments — 15% by 15 June, 45% by 15 September, 75% by 15 December and the whole liability by 15 March — and applies once the liability after TDS reaches ₹10,000. GST returns file in strict sequence, so one missed period blocks every later one and fees accrue on all of them at once; a nil return is still a return. Companies file AOC-4 and MGT-7 annually and every director renews DIR-3 KYC by 30 September, where late fees run at ₹100 per day per form with no ceiling at all.

How the numbers here are kept consistent

Statutory figures decay faster than any other kind of content, which is why a slab rate quoted without an assessment year attached should be treated as unverified wherever you find it. The approach here is to hold each figure in one place and read it everywhere else: the slab bands, the ₹75,000 standard deduction, the section 87A rebate, the surcharge thresholds and the deduction caps are defined once and used by the calculators, by the written guides and by the AI agents alike. A rate therefore cannot be current in a calculator and stale in an article, and the agents cannot answer from recalled training data that contradicts the tools on the same site.

The same discipline applies to dates. Each page carries the date its content last actually changed rather than the date the site was last rebuilt, so a page that says it was updated in August was genuinely edited in August. Figures that move with Council decisions or Budget announcements are scheduled for periodic re-checking against the department's own notifications, and where something is uncertain the honest answer is given as uncertain. None of this is a substitute for professional advice on your particular facts — it is intended to make the reading you do beforehand shorter and better informed.

How this content is written and checked  ·  About  ·  Privacy

Open India Law Simplified →