Income Tax Return Verification: Faceless transformation coming! You will benefit, here is how

Income Tax Faceless Verification Process: The Income Tax department has been taking a slew of measures to make the tax proceedings easier and hassle-free for assessees with the help of modern technology. The latest move of the Income Tax department is aimed at making the tax proceedings completely faceless. For this, the Income Tax department will soon launch a new mechanism to verify taxpayers' returns. On Wednesday, the finance ministry issued a notification in this regard. The Income Tax department has set up a Central Vigilance Commission (CVC) to carry out e-verification of the 'red-flagged' cases of income tax returns. Under the new facility, tax returns of individuals, as well as companies, will be verified.

New income tax verification system

Under the new verification system, the Income-Tax department has set 200 odd risk assessment parameters. On the basis of these parameters, the system will red flag the income tax returns filed by assessees. At present, the department picks only 0.5% of the total returns for examining discrepancies. "Now with the new e-verification system, all the income-tax returns filed by taxpayers will be matched with the financial data available with the department, which it gets from various sources. If any discrepancy is found, the system-generated e-mail notices will be sent to taxpayers seeking responses. The entire process will be faceless without involving any human interaction," DNA newspaper quoted a senior official privy to the developments as saying.

Last month, a senior official of the Income Tax department had said that the tax assessment will be "completely faceless" in about two years. In other words, the taxpayer will not have to face the tax man, Central Board of Direct Taxes Chairman Sushil Chandra had told news agency PTI that as many as 2.06 lakh income tax assessment cases were handled online by the department last year as part of the 'nameless and faceless' delivery of service to taxpayers.

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"CPC 2.0 has got a lot of new advantages. A pre-filled return form will be given to the taxpayer on the basis of information we get about them from the tax deducted at source (TDS) procedure...That will also facilitate processing of returns in 24 hours and we have got an agreement (with the technology vendor operating the CPC 2.0) that if it (I-T return) is processed in one day, more amount will be given. We expect this system to be rolled out in 2 years. Faster processing of returns will increase better tax compliance," Chandra had said.