Income Tax

Steps to Verify an Income Tax Notice

The new income tax portal allows the taxpayers to check if the income tax notice received by them is true or false.  In the month of October 2019, the tax department had launched a facility where users can check if they have received a valid income tax notice. In case you have any doubts about the veracity of letter/notice received by you from the tax department, you can verify an income tax notice easily. In this article, we shall discuss the steps to check the authenticity of the income tax notice received by a user.

What do you mean by Income Tax Notice?

An income tax notice is a communication in writing by the tax department to a taxpayer alerting such taxpayer about an issue with his/her tax account. The purpose of sending the notice could be owing to different reasons such as filing or non-filing his or her income tax return, for the purpose of making assessment or to ask certain details etc. When the Income Tax Department dispatches a notice to the taxpayer the taxpayer needs to act on the notice and get the matter sorted with the tax authorities.

Types of Notices issued by the Income Tax Department

The Income Tax Department can issue various notices under different sections of the Income Tax Act. Some of them are as follows:

• Notice under Section 143(2)
• Notice under Section 148
• Notice under Section 245
• Notice under Section 142(1).

Verify an Income Tax Notice Easily!

Earlier, the tax department specified Document Identification Number on the income tax notice issued from 1^st October 2019 onwards, but on the new income tax portal, notices from previous assessment years can also be checked. The facility can be used by keying in Document Identification Number and phone number (For all assessment years) or PAN, document type, assessment year, date of issue, mobile number (for notice/letters issued for AY 2011-12).

Steps-

You can verify the income tax notice received by you by following the steps mentioned below:

• Visit the official website of the income tax department- www.incometax.gov.in
• On the homepage, under the option-Our Services, choose Authenticate option;
• A new webpage shall be displayed on your screen. You will be provided with two options to authenticate the documents that you have received.

You may certify the document by PAN, assessment year, notification section, month and year of issue or by Document Identification Number. In both the cases, you will have to enter your mobile number.

If you choose the first option, that means PAN, assessment year, then select that and provide the details along with the mobile number, on the other hand if you select the second option, enter the DIN mentioned on the notice along with the mobile number.

• You will receive an OTP on your mobile number. Such OTP will be valid for only 15 minutes.
• Enter the OTP and after entering it, click on continue.
• When the OTP is authenticated, and if the notice or order received by you is real then it will be shown on the screen/website. A message will be displayed on the website- “Yes, the notice is valid and is issued by the Income Tax Authority”.  However, in case the notice is fake then the website will display the following- “No such record was found for document number/given criteria”.

Significance of this facility

This facility will allow taxpayers to tackle the nuances of fake notices. This tool, by the e-filing portal, can be utilized to verify the genuineness of documents or communications received from the tax department or any order issued by the tax authorities. With this facility, phishing e-mails and fraud communications can be identified by the taxpayers. Moreover, any document or notice received on mail is also uploaded by the department on this portal and its authenticity can be verified with this tool. 

What is DIN?

In order to validity of communications issued by the tax department, Document Identification Number was introduced. It will bring better transparency and improvement in the service delivery by the income tax department and help in maintaining a detailed record of the responses with respect to communication issued by the income tax department.  

Conclusion

If the tax department is not satisfied with your submission in ITR or has any issue with your filings, the income tax department can send you notice. Now the taxpayers can easily verify an income tax notice by following the steps mentioned above. If you are not sure regarding the genuineness of the notice received by you, then verify it on the official website of income tax department.

Read our article:Cash Transactions that can attract an Income Tax Notice