Income Tax Department to soon make e-verification operational

The Income Tax Department will soon operationalise the already notified e-verification scheme intended to verify information received from various reporting financial entities with the details filed in the income tax returns (ITRs) by the taxpayers.

In an online session organised by the tax department Thursday, Kamlesh C Varshney, Joint Secretary, Finance Ministry said taxpayers should utilise the facility of filing updated returns to fill in gaps of any mismatch in information or omission in the returns.

“CBDT has notified an e-verification scheme under Section 135A of the Income-tax Act, which will be operational very soon. The Department obtains information from various reporting entities. It’s voluminous information, it will be run through a risk management programme and from that more risk-oriented information and then shared with the taxpayer … then the taxpayer can come forward, and explain and produce necessary evidence to say how it is explained in your tax return, then no action will be taken against you. So you can satisfy the tax officer and the officer will drop the proceedings. This will happen online and the taxpayer need not visit the tax office,” he said.

Varshney added, “No order is required to be passed in this case because this is not a notice for reopening or reassessment. This is only for verification. Once that is verified, further steps will not be taken by the Income Tax Department. Or in case this information was missed out, then you can update your tax return, then the matter will end there. But in some cases, where we do not get any response, then we get to the next stage. And we are hoping that those cases falling under the next stage will be very minimal.”

Source from - https://indianexpress.com/article/business/i-t-dept-to-soon-make-e-verification-operational-8125992/