NEW DELHI, July 13:
The Income Tax Department today launched its ambitious One Time Password (OTP) based e-filing verification system for taxpayers, thereby ending the practice of sending paper acknowledgement to its office in Bengaluru.
The facility can be accessed using internet banking, Aadhaar number, ATM and email.
According to the rules notified in this regard by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) today, any taxpayer, whose income is Rs 5 lakh or below per annum and has no refund claims, he or she can straightaway generate the ‘Electronic Verification Code’ (EVC) for e-filing and validating their Income Tax Return (ITR) through their registered mobile number and e-mail id with the department.
However, this most simplified option, will be subject to certain “restrictions” which will be prepared by the taxman based on the concerned taxpayer’s “risk criteria and profile” in a case-to-case basis.
“This simply means that if the department has some adverse observation against the said PAN number with income less than Rs 5 lakh, he or she will not be allowed to do the verification directly through their email and mobile number alone and such cases will have to go through the other established procedures in this regard like linkup through Aadhaar database, internet baking or via the ATM,” a senior official explained.
These new measures would completely eliminate the need of sending the paper acknowledgement, called ITR-V, through post to the IT Central Processing Centre (CPC) based in Bengaluru.
In the other options given, those taxpayers who have internet banking activated can do the e-verification of their ITR.
“The facility will be available on the internet banking website and the verifier (taxpayer) will use this facility using internet banking id, login password and transaction password,” the latest CBDT rules said.
Once logged in on the banking portal, the taxpayer will be sent the EVC to his mobile number provided in the official e-filing web portal of the department which they will put in their ITR for final submission.
The OTP will be valid for 72 hours except in case of ‘Aadhaar’ based verification.
In case of ‘Aadhaar’ based verification, the OTP or EVC will be sent to the taxpayers’ mobile number registered with the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI) records.
“The Aadhaar OTP or EVC will be valid for ten minutes or as specified by the UIDAI,” the rules said.
Those who have the facility to conduct their banking activities at an Automated Teller Machine (ATM) of their bank can login with their ATM PIN and get the EVC generated which will have to be fed into the official e-filing webpage of the tax department for validation.
The CBDT, the apex policy making body of the IT Department, said the EVC will be a ten-digit alphanumeric number and would be “unique” for an assessee and his Permanent Account Number (PAN) and “will not” be valid for any other PAN at the time of filing of the ITR.
“One EVC can be used to validate one return of the assessee irrespective of the assessment year or return filing type (original or revised). The EVC will be stored against the assessee PAN along with other verification details. The verifier (filer) can use more than one mode to obtain EVC and can generate the EVC multiple times,” the rules said. (PTI)
The IT Department hosts the e-filing facility on its website—https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in.
The department initiated these new technology measures in order to fully automate the e-filing system and also to end taxpayers’ grievances with regard to their ITR-V not reaching by post to Bengaluru which led to their ITR getting rejected. (PTI)
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