Denial of any tax benefits, further demands made impossible by responding to the failures of the new tax portal add to the troubles of taxpayers
If you have been pending your tax return for 2019-2020, check your e-mails or call your chartering accountant quickly to determine if you have been sent a notice. The notice would probably tell you to decline a tax benefit even if you are eligible.
For example, Ritesh Jain (name changed), based on the amount he received in the fiscal year 2019-20, had declared a rental income of Rs 2.24 lakh.
Instead, the system assumed that Jain was seeking to deduct the interest for the home loan and added Rs 5 lakh in total income. The loan revenue was not taken into account.
Another Delhi lady submitted a late return. “Although it claimed loss of household property, the notice indicates that the house property loss cannot be claimed since the return has been filed late,” said Karan Batra, the founder of the Chartered Club of India.
Therefore, the rule for delayed returns states that nothing but losses from house ownership can be adjusted.
These are not individual cases as several accountants receive notifications from their customers. “In accordance with Section 143, we get so many misleading notifications.
These reports deal with the assessment year 2020-21 (one year after the financial year), “Ameet Patel, the tax partner for Manohar Chowdhary and associates, said.
The above notifications are primarily for complicated and time-consuming returns, many of which received a minimum refund of 7–8 months, pending last year.
Section 143, What is That?
Section 143(1) refers to an intimation sent by a taxpayer to validate the data in your tax returns by the Central Processing Center of the income tax department.
They are trying to check for discrepancies in tax calculations and inform the taxpayer of the error through a notice under section 143.
This month’s erroneous notices for returns filed last year are not just house taxes but are also part of many other categories.
“We filed the house rent allowance (HRA) claim on a salary individual’s tax return. This week we received a notice stating, “The gratuitous exemption is not allowed,” says Mehul Sheth, chartered accountant.
Unable to respond
Only by refiling your income tax return based on the income tax department’s suggestions should you respond to this notice.
“We usually need to correct the mistake, if any, or to indicate that the tax claim is valid. However, the new tax portal does not accept this when we try to submit a reply to this notice,” says Batra.
You shall reply within 30 days to the notice. But taxpayers and chartered accounts are helpless because the submission tab does not work even after filing the response.
Within thirty days, you should reply to the notice. But taxpayers and chartered accounts are helpless because the submission tab does not work even after filing the response.
“We got the notifications, but we cannot act because the new tax portal doesn’t work. The data are not saved on the system and we have chosen to stop doing things because we only waste time,” says Patel.
The time spent to reply to such notices is also high. “We have lost 10 hours to re-fill in the data, store them on the system and try them again on various days, where we can answer such notices within an hour,” says anonymity requesting another chartered accountant.
Tax professionals are currently waiting for Infosys’s 15 September 2021 deadline to ensure that the new tax portal operates smoothly.
