NEW DELHI: The Income Tax department has now made it mandatory for all its officers to not issue any notice, order, summons or any other correspondence without a computer-generated Document Identification Number (DIN). The move is aimed at clamping down of all unauthorized notices and summons issued to individuals and corporates.
5 things to know about the new rule for issuing if income tax notices:
1) The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has issued a circular announcing a new rule related to generation, allotment and quoting of document identification number (DIN) in the notice, order, summons, letter and correspondence issued by the income tax department. Those without a DIN shall be treated as invalid and shall be deemed to have never been issued.
2) The new rules come into effect from October 1, 2019. In case of all pending assessment proceedings, where notices were issued manually, the income-tax authorities will upload the notices on the systems by October 31, 2019.
3) At present, almost all notices and orders are being generated electronically on the Income Tax Business Application (ITBA) platform but there have been cases where notices were issued manually, without maintaining a proper audit trail of such communication.
4) The CBDT has listed five exception cases where the taxman can issue notices manually but only after recording reasons in writing in the file and with the prior written approval of the Chief Commissioner or Director General of Income Tax.
5) The development comes in the wake of the recent call for ease in unnecessary and continuous tax-related inquiries along with rising in concern over increasing harassment of corporates by tax officials, IANS reported. This situation came to light with Coffee Day Enterprises founder V.G. Siddhartha’s last letter to the company board, where he mentioned incessant harassment by income tax officials.