E-Filing Of I-T Returns Is Must For Taxpayers Whose Annual Income Is Rs 5 Lakh Or More
Bangalore : Taxpayers will soon get relief from sending a paper acknowledgement of their e-filed return as Income Tax department is set to introduce a new customer verification system for the task by sending One Time Passwords, validating net banking identity and enrolling Aadhaar number in the returns form.
The department, through its policy making body Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), has decided to completely do away with the “cumbersome” procedure currently undertaken by a taxpayer to send his ITR-V (Income Tax Return Verification) form to the department’s Central Processing Centre (CPC) based here through post.
A number of taxpayers have complained that despite sending the hard copy of ITR-V by “speed or registered post” their forms were being acknowledged by the CPC as “not received”.
CPC Director and I-T Commissioner R K Mishra said the department has already submitted a blueprint for introducing these new measures to the CBDT and these will be implemented very soon. In order to ensure another layer of security and authenticity to the e-filed I-T returns, the officer said, the return forms will have a new column for mentioning the unique Aadhar number of the taxpayer.
“Last year, we introduced a new column in the ITR where taxpayers had to share their personal mobile numbers and email ids. That exercise has given us good results and taxpayers have benefitted as we could promptly inform them about their tax issues.
“Aadhar will not only add to the security of the ITR but also give it a unique and distinct identity,” he said adding however, it was “not” mandatory. As per existing rules, a person who files his or her tax return online, has to send a copy of the ITR-V to CPC within 120 days for processing of the return.
“We have made some categories in this regard (for stopping ITR-V totally). Like in case of low-risk category of taxpayers like salaried class we will send a One Time Password (OTP) on their mobile phone to authenticate their e-return. “In case of high risk category of taxpayers like corporate and big entities we can ask them to do it through their net banking accounts which are already vetted and cleared by respective banks,” he said. We hope, Mishra said, to put all these measures in place before the upcoming tax filing season.
Mishra said the CPC, till now, has received 3 crore e-returns and by March 31 the numbers are expected to touch an all-time high of 3.2 crore.
Neelabh Srivastava
