I-T dept to taxpayers: Save our official email id in inbox

After asking taxpayers to validate their personal email ids and mobile phone numbers for online filing of Income Tax returns, the I-T department has now urged them to include its official email address in the 'safe list' of their inboxes.
The department has suggested taxpayers to validate and include in the 'white/safe list' of their respective inboxes the official handle of the department-- 'DONOTREPLY@incometaxindiaefiling.Gov.In', so that it does not land in the spam or junk folder of the taxpayer.
"What a taxpayer needs to do is to include this email id in the safe list of his or her email recipients. Once an online tax filer validates his or her email id and mobile phone on the department's online portal, the system sends an auto-generated PIN to complete the secure process and hence this email should not land into the spam folder which can be easily missed by the individual," a senior I-T officer said.

The department has issued the advisory after it found instances of this validation email landing into the spam or junk folder of taxpayer's inboxes thereby leading to trouble in e-filing.
The online tax filing season is on and as of now the last date is July 31.
Once the email is received from this official handle, the taxpayers can use the PIN to go further with the online filing procedures of their Income Tax Return (ITR).

The Central Board of Direct Taxes, the apex authority of the I-T, has recently notified new rules for online filing of ITRs saying taxpayers filing their returns this year (assessment year 2014-15) will have to mandatorily share their personal email ids and mobile numbers with the department.

The aim behind this latest move was to update and stay in touch with the taxpayer each and every time their is a tax related issue.
The CBDT also recently notified taxpayers that the I-T department does not send any communication from private email addresses such as gmail, yahoo etc to them.
"Taxpayers are cautioned that they should not respond to such phishing mails and avoid downloading any attachment, which may contain virus or malicious software," the CBDT had said.