Received an Income Tax Notice ?

Though we file our income tax return cautiously we do make few errors. After making such errors we all are concerned about the outcome of such errors. Once we upload our income tax return, the same is assessed by the Income tax department. After assessment the Income Tax Department issues Income tax Notices. In this article I am going to give a bird’s eye view on the types of notices issued and reasons of such issuance.

Notice u/s 139(9): When filing your income tax return, it is important to ensure that you provide details of all your income, deductions, investments. If the Income Tax Department finds any mismatch of information or mistakes in your tax return, it will send you a notice u/s 139(9), asking for proof/justification for the mistakes/mismatch. Failure to respond to the notice issued, the ITD can levy heavy penalties on you.

Notice u/s 148: You can get notice u/s 148 if the assessing officer has a reason to believe that your income which was chargeable to tax has escaped assessment. If he has material to support his belief, he will record his reasons in writing and send you a notice u/s148.

Notice u/s 245: This intimation is received when you have a tax demand pending from the IT department or when you have claimed a refund from them for some other assessment year. Section245 of the Income tax empowers the AO to adjust the refund against any tax demand outstanding from the taxpayer. In simple words, the IT department wants to adjust the refund due against a demand due from you. This demand may pertain to previous years.

Notice u/s 143(1): This intimation is received by the assessee when there are arithmetical errors, internal inconsistencies, tax and interest calculation errors, Tds mismatch etc. Reply to such intimations have to make in due time or else the return filed could be considered as in valid.

Notice u/s 143(2): If you get notice u/s 143(2), it means your return has been selected for scrutiny by the Assessing Officer. The notice might ask you to produce documents in support of deductions, exemptions, allowances, reliefs, other claims of loss you have made and provide proof of all sources of income.

Notice u/s 144: If the tax payer has not filed his Income tax return or has not replied to any of the notices issued by the department, then notice u/s 144 is issued. This notice informs the tax payer about his tax payable along with interest and penalty.

Notice u/s 142: In this notice the information of the bank statements, amount deposited, withdrawn, investment details as well as other transaction details are asked by the department.
      There is no need for the taxpayers to get worried after getting any of the notices, if a person understands these notices properly, then he will be less worried and can act correctly.
                

                                                                                          - CA Neha Vora