Under new rules, Income Tax Department has asked its customer care centres to monitor email complaints of taxpayers about their income tax returns and other problems and diligently send them to tax officers. Here we explain the top 5 ways taxpayers can befit from the income tax rules:

Under new rules, Income Tax Department has asked its customer care centres to monitor email complaints of taxpayers about their income tax returns and other problems and diligently send them to tax officers. The new directive comes at a time when FM Arun Jaitley unveiled two taxpayer-friendly initiatives of the department which envisage resolution of complaints without visiting a tax office and easy processes to obtain a permanent accoundt number (PAN) card. Here we explain the top 5 ways taxpayers can benefit from the income tax rules:

1. The Income Tax Department, under the new income tax returns instructions, has asked the Aaykar Sampark Kendras (ASK) to forward emails received from the taxpayers to range in-charges who will subsequently send it to jurisdictional Assessing Officers (AOs). As per earlier norms, these complaints were used to be sent to the AO but were not monitored at various levels of hierarchy, which will be done now. In some cases, they were forwarded by the ASK to the AO through snail mail and not email, which will done in all cases now.

2. The ASKs or the income tax customer care centres, are meant to answer queries related to the status of Permanent Account Number (PAN) and Tax Deduction Account Number applications, procedure of filing of income tax and wealth tax returns, refund related grievances and for redressal of other general queries over phone calls or email.

3. In order to provide quick resolution of taxpayer’s grievance/s, wherever action is required to be taken by the officers in field formation, the Aayakar Sampark Kendra should forward the email to concerned Commissioner of Income Tax (Administration and Coordination) for onward transmission to respective jurisdictional Assessing Officers for necessary action. The taxpayer may also be informed so that he may do further correspondence with the concerned officer.

4. The e-Sahyog initiative inaugurated by FM Arun Jaitley on Tuesday is aimed at reducing compliance cost, especially for small taxpayers. It will provide an online mechanism to resolve mismatches in returns of taxpayers whose returns have not been selected for scrutiny, without visiting the tax office. E-Sahyog pilot project furthers CBDT’s commitment to work in an e-environment and reduces the need for the taxpayer to physically appear before tax authorities

5. In the pilot project, 91,000 income tax payers have been identified, under which the assessees will be informed by SMS and email about the mismatch and then they will have to log in to e-filing portal of the tax department to see the mismatch.