Income Tax Department offers help in filing returns at door steps

NEW DELHI: In a major drive to help taxpayers file returns, the Income Tax Department on Tuesday offered to provide expert services at door-steps in the four metros and some major cities like Bangalore, Jaipur and Patna.

Also, it has started 'Online Tax Help' to provide professional services to resolve tax-filing related queries by tax experts through email or phone within 24 hours.


To avail these facilities, a taxpayer will have to visit the website 'www.trpscheme.com'.

Under the 'Register for Home Visit' initiative, Tax Return Preparer (TRP) will visit the residence of the assessee to provide assistance in return filing.

Taxpayers who choose to register for home visit, will be asked to indicate in short the help required and a convenient date and time when the TRP can visit them for assistance.

"The help desk will forward the query of the taxpayer to the nearest available TRP and fix the appointment telephonically," an official statement said. It said this is aimed at facilitating taxpayers in filing their return, thereby reducing their cost of compliance.

It further said the TRPs are allowed to collect fee from the taxpayers as per the TRP notification subject to a maximum of Rs 250 per return preparation.

The facility for home visit by TRPs has been presently made available in few cities like Bangalore, Chennai, Guwahati, Hyderabad, Jaipur, Kolkata, Lucknow, Mumbai, New Delhi, and Patna. The facility will be extended to more cities during the next phase.

Taxpayers can call on the TRP scheme call centre at 1800-10-23738 for more information. The TRP scheme is an initiative of the I-T Department to help small and marginal tax payers in filing their income tax returns.

The TRPs are self-employed graduates, trained by the department for filing of returns as well as quarterly TDS statements. The department also provides incentive to the TRPs for preparing of returns of tax payers.

Income Tax Department to increase online services

The Income Tax Department is trying to keep pace with the changing times and technology. This would help both the tax department and the tax payers in terms of faster ands more efficient services.

Some of the actions taken in this regard include issuance of PAN, electronically deposition of taxes -self assessment tax, TDS etc, electronic filing of income tax returns, and so on. Taxpayers can now look forward to a faster redressal of grievances related to refunds and returns without many visits to income tax offices as the department is bringing in number of its services online.

The department is in the process of enhancing a host of taxpayer related services like filing of returns, grievances and matters related to vigilance on its existing web portal The Income Tax Department is continually hosting a number of taxpayer-friendly services on its web portal. The effort is to reduce the taxpayers' time in dealing with the department and deliver services fast as compared to the usual time taken. The move would reduce taxpayers' visits to the department's offices and help them communicate with the department from anywhere.

It is to be noted that many of the essential services are already available online. However, keeping in mind the increasing rush of taxpayers, the online facilities will be increased. The department already hosts services like information on PAN, viewing of tax credits, Annual Information Return (AIR), Tax Information Network (TIN), Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) status, Tax Return Preparer Scheme ( TRPS) and various tax related forms.

All these services have already simplified the life of the tax payers to a lot of extent. They are saved from the trouble of spending huge time, effort and money in meeting their tax compliance requirements.

The department's website also hosts information related to RTI and provisions under various tax laws. The department will get additional software platforms and servers to host these facilities and issue electronic acknowledgements to taxpayers.

Tax payers will be able to lodge their grievances online, with the launch of an online complaint redressal mechanism. The department will register the grievances of the taxpayer on the official portal also, similar to the online filing of tax returns facility.

While registering online complaints, the tax payer will also receive an acknowledgment number which would have a fixed time limit that will ensure that it is redressed within a stipulated duration.

These moves will bring about greater efficiency and transparency in the tax filing and assessment process. The turnaround time will be drastically reduced, the paper filing and tracking processes would be eliminated. The taxpayers would be able to expect their refunds and redressal of complaints on a faster basis.

This would make the returns filing and tax-paying process much simpler, which in turn would lead to greater compliance. This would eventually benefit the government in terms of enhanced tax collections. So, it is in the interest of all that the new technology is put to use by the tax department.

I-T Department's information utilisation deficient, says CAG

NEW DELHI: There are deficiencies in the Income Tax Department's utilisation of information related to taxation and sometimes available details are either inadequate or incorrect, says a report by official auditor CAG.

These observations are part of the auditor's report on strengthening the tax base through the use of information tabled in Parliament today.

"We found several deficiencies in the scheme of flow and utilisation of information ... some the information lacked basic information like PAN of assesses thereby rendering it useless," the report said.

The IT Department uses "pieces of information" from different sources to strengthen the tax base besides getting information from tax returns filed by the assesses, the report said.

These findings come at a time when the government, hard pressed for funds, is looking at ways to bolster the tax base.

CAG also came across cases where incorrect information was transmitted to Assessing Officers (AOs).

"Income Tax Department made no effort to transfer this incorrect transmitted information to AOs to correct assesses," it said.

Noting that the Department was not following the notices seeking requisite information from various entities, the report said the full functionality of the Central Information Branch (CIB) module.

The IT Department's CIB collects, uploads information into the system and disseminates them to AOs, it said.

The report is for the year ended March 2012. "Strengthening the tax base is arguably one of the most important aspects of the direct tax management.

Income Tax department cracks whip on refund frauds

NEW DELHI: An internal probe by the Income Tax department, to detect the occurrence of a spate of refund frauds, has found that swindlers have hacked into the user-ids of retired officials and unclaimed "suspense" refunds were generated to siphon off the taxpayers hard-earned money.

The department cracked the whip after it found that there was a steep increase in the number of refund related frauds and a number of taxpayers and assesses complained to the department as they never got their due money from the I-T.

The CBI also recently arrested two people for defrauding in the refunds generated by the I-T.

The department has now issued a slew of directives to its officials who handle refunds, which include launching a new password policy and tagging each refund with a unique code number while it has increased the intervention of senior officials in checking refunds claims.

The department, during its enquiry, found that a number of cases were processed by migrating the Permanent Account Numbers (PANs) of the taxpayer to those Assessment Officers (AOs) and user-ids who were "not even authorised to process Income Tax returns".

The department has now asked its technical unit to run a scanner on all those official user-ids, including those of retired officials, which are not in use and kill them.

When an AO processes a refund, he or she logs on to the official system of the I-T to settle the claim and for this an user-id is created for every such officer.

The probe also found that in certain cases the AOs fed fictitious account numbers of the assessee, for whom the refund was supposed to be sent, in the electronic refund generation system of the department thereby rendering these refunds prone to fraud by scamsters.

In view of these malpractices, the tax department has also planned to create local audit teams in the department to keep a check if the AOs are adhering to the new norms initiated for refunds generation.

In yet another case, it was found that 3,000 dummy user-ids, created by the department for an AO who has multiple charges, were not de-activated when the officer relinquished the additional charge or was transferred and hence they were prone to misuse and hacking.

"These user-ids will now be deleted," a senior I-T officer said.

The new password policy initiated by the department mandates that these secret codes will be changed every month and they will further be encrypted in a Lotus note format.

The probe also found that the AOs would transfer a refund case to a dummy or a different charge so that the actual tax collection in his domain does not go down in lieu of issuing high value refunds.

It was also detected that in case of paper refunds, invalid PAN was mentioned so that the refund amount does not reflect against the concerned AOs charge and hence this was leading to the creation of 'suspense' refunds which kept lying unclaimed.

The department has now mounted surveillance on these cases and has issued strict instructions to the Commissioners and Chief Commissioners to handle refunds which are a source of major grievance for lakhs of taxpayers.

10 steps to file your income tax return online

The last day for filing your income tax return is here. Don't fret. Follow these simple steps and file your tax return online before the end of the day:

Step 1

Log on to the Income Tax Department's portal (www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in) meant for filing taxes online. Register yourself using your Permanent Account Number (PAN), which will act as your user ID.

Step 2

Under the 'Download' menu, go to e-filing AY 2012-13 < Individual/HUF and select the appropriate Income Tax Return (ITR) form. Download ITR-1's (Sahaj) return preparation software if you are a salaried individual, pensioner, own one house property and/or earn interest income.

Step 3

Open the downloaded Return Preparation Software (excel utility), follow the instructions and enter all the details using your Form 16.

Step 4

Compute tax payable by clicking the 'Calculate Tax' tab. Pay tax and enter the challan details in the tax return (not applicable if your tax liability is nil).

Step 5

Confi rm the details entered by clicking the 'Validate' tab. Proceed to generate an XML file, which will be automatically saved on your computer. The registration process (Step 1) can also be initiated at this stage.

Step 6

Go to 'Submit Return' on the portal's left panel and upload the XML file after selecting 'AY 2012-2013' and the relevant form.

Step 7

You will be asked whether you wish to digitally sign the file. If you have obtained a DS ( digital signature) select 'Yes'. Else, choose 'No'.

Step 8

Once the message regarding successful e-filing is flashed on your screen, the process is complete. The acknowledgement form - ITR-Verification (ITR-V)-will be generated and you can download the same. It will also be mailed to your registered email ID.

Step 9

Take a print-out of the form ITR-V, sign it in blue ink, and send it by ordinary or speed post to the Income Tax Department-CPC, Post Bag No-1, Electronic City Post Office, Bangalore - 560 100, Karnataka, within 120 days of uploading your e-return. Couriered documents will not be accepted.

Step 10

The I-T department will send you the acknowledgement by email, which is the final step in the process. If you do not receive it from the Income Tax Department in due course, you can send the form ITR-V again.