The Karnataka State Chartered Accountants Association (KSCAA) represented the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on technical concerns in the e-proceedings tab of the income tax portal and gave some suggestions. The association expressed worry over the failure to display notices given in previous years. The representation concerned communication without a copy of the notice, i.e., improper service.
While the introduction of e-proceedings has benefited assessees and tax professionals, the organization claimed that they have found that a lot of income tax notices have been issued in the recent past without any annexure (the notice itself) being made available in the e-proceedings tab of the portal. The assessees are notified of the issuance of the abovementioned notice via SMS, email, and display on the e-proceedings tab. However, no copy of the warning is provided.
Because non-compliance with notice would result in severe penalties, in addition to the potential of an ex-parte instruction, it is respectfully requested that the field officers be informed to refrain from issuing notices until the portal’s functionality is restored. Where notices have already been given, it is also expected that refrain from advising from issuing unfavourable orders and/or grant a suo moto delay to avoid a miscarriage of justice, as asked by the KASCAA.
Some other valuable suggestions related to the ‘e-proceedings tab’ of the Income Tax Portal-
Notices issued by the investigative authority will be made available on the Income Tax portal in order to improve compliance.
‘Proceedings Name’ should be used instead of unclear references such as ‘Issue Letter’.
The assessee should be given the option of moving old attended or irrelevant notices from the department ‘for your action’ to ‘for your information’.
Enable the option to file an application for rectification, stay, TRC, a certificate under section 281, 270AA, related petition, etc.
Orders issued on the grounds of ex-parte without regard for adjournment requests and previous submissions by the Appeal Center should be avoided. Furthermore, repeating hearing notices without taking into account previous submissions and without seeking anything results in the conclusion that responses are not transparent to the counterparty.
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New notices should be marked or highlighted correctly, and once addressed, they should be suitably downplayed.
Allow assessees to return to the page where they began instead of starting over from the ‘e-proceedings’ home page when they click the ‘back’ button.
