Gig workers turn to tax filing as TDS refunds offer cash, financial records

For India's gig workers, tax filing is increasingly becoming part of the job.

For many delivery partners, 1% of their payouts is deducted as tax at source. Over a year, those deductions can add up to a sizeable refund, particularly for workers whose annual earnings remain below the taxable threshold. As a result, platforms are increasingly building tax-filing assistance into the apps through which their workers earn their livelihoods.

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The scale of the shift is visible in filing data. ClearTax, one of the agencies working with gig platforms to help workers file returns, told TOI that filings through its platform more than quadrupled in three years — from 2.5 lakh in assessment year 2023-24 (FY2022-23) to 5.5 lakh in AY2025-26 (FY2023-24) and approximately 11 lakh in AY2026-27 (FY2025-26).

"Most of them are below taxable income," Avinash Polepally, vice-president of product and business at ClearTax, told Times of India.

Some workers earn through multiple platforms, while others may also have gaming winnings or capital gains to report. In one unusual case, Polepally said, a worker with several income sources received a refund of Rs 5.4 lakh.

For workers, however, the benefit of filing a return goes beyond getting back TDS. A filed tax return can create a formal financial record that may help when applying for credit. Some workers also file before seeking jobs in West Asia, where the documentation can support visa applications.

Eternal, which operates Zomato and Blinkit, told TOI that the two platforms facilitated income-tax return filing for 2.1 lakh delivery partners for FY2025-26. Around 75% were first-time filers, with workers receiving Rs 33.6 crore in refunds — an average of about Rs 1,600 across all filers.

"For many delivery partners, this may be their first experience with formal financial services," Zomato CEO Aditya Mangla said.

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The subsidised service is integrated into the delivery-partner app, allowing workers to enter the process, verify their details through an OTP and complete their filing with the help of a chatbot.

Swiggy said more than 50,000 food-delivery and Instamart partners filed returns through its app, generating Rs 6.5 crore in refund claims. More than a third of these workers were first-time filers. The company worked with ClearTax, TaxBuddy and Dvara Money for the initiative.

Zepto said 30,895 filings were registered in 2026, with refund claims exceeding Rs 4.9 crore. Meesho's Valmo said around 10,000 partners initiated filing after its programme began in July, claiming nearly Rs 2 crore. Almost 70% of those workers were first-time filers.

Delhivery also offers riders tax-filing assistance through WhatsApp, although it did not disclose filing numbers.

The numbers, however, are not directly comparable. Eternal reported completed filings and refunds actually received, Swiggy reported filings and refund claims, Zepto counted registered filings, while Valmo's figure refers to workers who initiated the process.

That distinction is important in assessing how far these initiatives translate into broader financial inclusion.

"It's a very, very selective and convenient interpretation of financial inclusion," said Balaji Parthasarathy, former professor at IIIT-Bangalore and principal investigator, Fairwork India.

Still, the growing number of workers using these services points to a broader change in India's gig economy: tax compliance, once largely outside the day-to-day experience of informal workers, is increasingly becoming part of the digital infrastructure through which they work, earn and manage their finances.