Post-Filing & Compliance

Filing the Income Tax Return on the e-filing portal is only the first half of the process. Until the return is verified -- either electronically by one of the five permitted electronic modes or physically by signing the printed Income Tax Return Verification Form (Form …

After the return has been filed and verified, processing by the Centralized Processing Centre at Bengaluru takes anywhere from a few weeks for simple salaried returns to several months for tax-audit returns or returns with complex schedules. The e-filing portal exposes …

Once the section 143(1) intimation accepts the return with a refund, the amount flows to the Refund Banker -- State Bank of India under contract with the Central Board of Direct Taxes -- which routes the credit through the Electronic Clearance Service network to the ban…

An Income Tax notice arrives in the registered email and on the e-filing portal under 'Pending Actions'. It is never to be ignored. The Income-tax Department issues different categories of notices for different purposes -- enquiry before assessment, processing adjustmen…

Filing the return of income after the due date prescribed under sub-section (1) of section 139 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 attracts a layer of consequences -- a flat late-filing fee under section 234F, simple interest under section 234A on the unpaid tax, the denial of …

Every Income Tax payment -- advance tax, self-assessment tax, regular assessment tax, Tax Deducted at Source, Tax Collected at Source, Equalisation Levy, Securities Transaction Tax -- carries a Challan Identification Number generated through the Online Tax Accounting Sy…

Pressing the 'Submit' button on the e-filing portal does not close the file. Eight discrete post-filing actions remain -- and skipping any one of them can convert a clean return into a problem case six months later. This article puts the eight actions on a single page i…