The Karnataka State Chartered Accountants Association (KSCAA) represented the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) regarding the technical glitches in the e-proceedings tab of the income tax portal and also made some suggestions also. The association raised the concern on the non-display of notices issued in the recent past years. The subject matter of the representation was communication without a copy of the notice i.e. improper service.
The association stated that “While the introduction of e-proceedings/ proceedings has benefitted the assesses as well as tax professionals, we have noticed that a lot of 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 issue of the said notice is alerted to the assesæes by way of SMS, email and display on the e-proceedings’ tab. However, the copy of the notice is not made available.”
“Since non-compliance with notices will involve a lot of penal consequences in addition to the risk of ex-parte order , we implore your good self to direct the field officers to refrain from the issue of notices till the time the functionality is fixed on the portal. Where notices have already been issued, we also request your good self to direct them to refrain from passing adverse orders and/or grant an adjournment on Suo moto basis to avoid a miscarriage of justice” requested the KASCAA.
Other suggestions in connection with the e-proceedings tab’ of the Income Tax Portal are:
1. Notices issued by the investigation department to be made available on the IT portal for better compliance;
2. ‘Proceedings Name’ to be mentioned instead of vague references i.e ‘Issue Letter’;
3. Option to be provided to the assessee to move old attended/irrelevant notices ‘For your action’ to ‘For your information’;
4. Enable an option to file an application for rectification, stay, TRC, certificate u/s 281, 270AA, related petition, etc.;
5. Orders passed on ex-parte basis without considering adjournment requests and previous submissions by the Appeal Centre should be avoided. Also, multiple hearing notices without considering the previous submissions and without seeking anything leads us to the conclusion that our responses are not visible to the counterparty.
6. New notices should be flagged/appropriately highlighted and once it is attended to, the same should be appropriately downplayed.
7. Upon dicking the ‘back’ button, enable assessees to go back to the page where they started instead of starting all over again from the home page of ‘e-proceedings’.
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