Income Tax department’s unique number comes into force from today; no communication will be valid without it
Income Tax Department’s DIN Number: In a major step that will bring efficiency and transparency in the functioning of the income tax department, every communication of the department issued today onwards will have a unique document identification number (DIN). The Central Board of Direct Taxes had issued a circular last month, making it mandatory to use a unique DIN number from October 1. Now any tax notice, summon or letter issued to any corporate or individual tax payer will be invalid without this number. On the first day of implementation of the CBDT’s decision, more than 17,500 DIN numbers were generated by Income Tax Department on Tuesday.
In order to curb the corrupt practices and bring transparency, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman has asked the department to use a unique DIN number in every correspondence of the department.
“From today, any communication from Income Tax Department without a computer-generated DIN, be it a notice, letter, order or summon or any other correspondence, would be treated as invalid and shall be non-est (non-existent), in the eyes of law,” said revenue secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey.
He said that from now on any document issued by the income tax department without a DIN number will be treated as it was never issued.
Moreover, now the recipients will be able to verify the authenticity of the document sent to them by the department.
“From today onwards, all such communications with DIN would be verifiable on the e-filing portal,” said revenue secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey adding that no communication would be issued manually without DIN except under the specified exceptional circumstances.
Even then, the concerned officer issuing an income tax notice manually will have to obtain approval from the appropriate chief commissioner or director general of income tax in a particular format. Also, the officer will have to record reasons in writing for issuing a manual notice and upload it on the government portal within 15 days of issuing the notice.
In addition to this, all the income tax notices issued by the department after August 14 this year will have to be uploaded on the system portal.
In his independence day speech this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced his intention to clean the tax administration system of corrupt officers.
Compulsory use of DIN number in every communication of the income tax department is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s drive to sack corrupt tax officials.
The Modi government has already sacked more than 60 senior tax officers of CBDT and CBIC this year on charges of corruption and inefficiency.
In his independence day speech this year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had announced his intention to clean the tax administration system of corrupt officers.
Compulsory use of DIN number in every communication of the income tax department is in line with Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s drive.
The Modi government has already sacked more than 60 senior tax officers of CBDT and CBIC this year on charges of corruption and inefficiency.