say it is best to write a will to this effect to avoid disputes padam chand gupta has already willed his huf property to his two daughters both of them were against me writing the will but i didnt want to leave anything to chance says the octogenarian guptas wife kamlesh rani is a coparcener in her fathers huf however while the mitakshara system which is followed in most parts of the country has accepted the change the dayabhagaschool which governs the hufs in west bengal and assam continues with the bias under the dayabhagasystem the father is the sole owner of the joint family property no other member can enforce the partition of the huf as long as he is alive however the mitakshara law stipulates that the property belongs to the huf not to an individual it can therefore be partitioned even during the lifetime of the karta income and tax of huf there are five basic heads of income including salary capital gains rent profit from business and income from other sources except for salary the huf can earn from all of these it can invest the initial corpus as well as the gifts received in subsequent years to earn capital gains ancestral property can be let out to earn rental income it can also start a business and earn profit from it interest and royalty incomes are categorised as other sources the karta will have to maintain the books of accounts of the huf and file tax returns on its behalf the date of filing tax returns and the tax rate are no different from that of individual taxpayers he also needs to invest to save tax under section 80c and 80ccf through intelligent planning an individual can shift some of the taxinefficient investments to the huf hotchpot so that the tax burden is lowered given the intricacies involved it is best to take the help of a professional this is also because the taxman looks at huf tax returns with a degree of scepticism the income pattern of an huf is often questioned by income tax officers says bohra the general belief is that the huf has been formed to evade tax and that its accounts have been fudged however if your chartered accountant is good he can help you cross these hurdles without putting you on the wrong side of the law or inviting a notice from the tax department one must do a costbenefit analysis if by paying a fee of 800010000 to the chartered accountant you can save 1 lakh in tax it would be money well spent says goel smart strategies insure the familys health the tax savings apart the huf arrangement can be used to optimise the benefits on other fronts take health insurance if there are enough people in the huf say 2025 a karta can get a group health insurance cover at a lower price than that of an ordinary plan some recent innovations by insurance companies may