I-T Department to send OTP, includes Aadhaar to ease taxpayer e-filing

CBDT decided to completely do away with the "cumbersome" procedure undertaken currently by a taxpayer to send his ITR-V (Verification) form to the department's Central Processing Centre

Taxpayers will soon get relief from sending a paper acknowledgement of their e-filed return as Income Tax department is set to introduce a new customer verification system for the task by sending One Time Passwords, validating net banking identity and enrolling Aadhaar number in the returns form.

The I-T department, through its policy making body Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), has decided to completely do away with the "cumbersome" procedure undertaken currently by a taxpayer to send his ITR-V (Verification) form to the department's Central Processing Centre (CPC) based here through post.

"We are fastly moving towards a regime where the taxpayer will not have to send the paper acknowledgement of the ITR-V (Income Tax Return Verification).

"We want to make e-filing completely hassle-free and easy for taxpayers," CPC Director and I-T Commissioner R K Mishra told a group of visiting journalists here.

A number of taxpayers have complained to the department that despite they sending the hard copy of ITR-V by "speed or registered post" their forms were being acknowledged by the CPC as "not received" and hence the department, for long, has been looking at options to do away with this system altogether.

The CPC Director said the department has already submitted a blueprint for introducing these new measures to the CBDT and these will be implemented very soon.

In order to ensure another layer of security and authenticity to the e-filed I-T returns, the officer said, the return forms will have a new column for mentioning the unique Aadhar number of the taxpayer.

"Last year, we introduced a new column in the ITR where taxpayers had to share their personal mobile numbers and email ids. That exercise has given us good results and taxpayers have benefitted as we could promptly inform them about their tax issues.

"Aadhar will not only add to the security of the ITR but also give it a unique and distinct identity," he said adding however, it was "not" mandatory.

As per existing rules, a person who files his or her tax return online, has to send a copy of the ITR-V to CPC within 120 days for processing of the return.

"We have made some categories in this regard (for stopping ITR-V totally). Like in case of low-risk category of taxpayers like salaried class we will send a One Time Password (OTP) on their mobile phone to authenticate their e-return.

"In case of high risk category of taxpayers like corporate and big entities we can ask them to do it through their net banking accounts which are already vetted and cleared by respective banks," he said.

We hope, Mishra said, to put all these measures in place before the upcoming tax filing season.