Steps taken by Income Tax Department for safeguarding taxpayers from Phishing email

Central Board of Direct Taxes
PRESS RELEASE
New Delhi, 5th February, 2016
 
Sub:– Steps taken by Income Tax Department for safeguarding taxpayers from Phishing email - regarding
 
The Income Tax Department has been at the forefront of using technology in implementing its –e-Governance initiatives. Most of its routine communication to taxpayers is through email and SMS. Therefore, the Department is very sensitive and alert to attempts made by fraudsters to spoof the Department’s identity to send phishing emails. To ensure that taxpayers are aware that the Department does not seek any confidential or financial information of the taxpayer over email, the below mentioned advisory has been prominently displayed on the national website:
“The Income Tax Department NEVER asks for your PIN numbers, passwords or similar access information for credit cards, banks or other financial accounts through e-mail.
The Income Tax Department appeals to taxpayers NOT to respond to such e-mails and NOT to share information relating to their credit card, bank and other financial accounts.”

High Court fines Income tax Department for not granting TDS credit

The below judgement in favour of taxpayer regarding non granting of due refund due to mismatch in TDS credit in Form 26AS:

Rakesh Kumar Gupta vs. UOI (Allahabad High Court)

Assessee cannot be denied credit for TDS on the ground of Form 26AS mismatch because he is not at fault. Non-grant of TDS credit causes harassment, inconvenience & makes the assessee feel cheated. Dept to pay interest + costs of Rs. 25,000

The assessee filed a return in which he claimed a refund of Rs. 2.32 lakhs on account of excess TDS by the Government department. The return was processed by the Central Processing Centre (CPC) of the Income-tax Department at Bangalore and a refund of only Rs.43,740 was issued. No intimation was given to the assessee as to why the balance amount of Rs.1.88,630 was not refundable. The assessee filed an application u/s 154 for rectification of the mistake and asked for refund of the balance amount. As there was no response from the department despite several reminders, the assessee filed a writ petition in the High Court. HELD by the High Court allowing the Petition:

(i) The difficulty faced by the tax payers relating to credit of TDS was considered by the Delhi High Court in Court On its Own Motion vs. CIT 352 ITR 273 and the CBDT was directed to issue directions with regard to giving credit of unmatched and mismatched TDS certificates. Pursuant thereto, the CBDT issued Instruction No.5 of 2013 dated 8.7.2013 directing that where the assessee approaches the AO with requisite details and particulars in the form of TDS certificate as evidence against any mismatch amount the AO would verify whether or not the deductor had made payment of the TDS in the government account and, in the event, the payment had been made, credit of the same would be given to the assessee.

(ii) On facts, no effort has been made by the AO to verify whether the deductor had made the payment of the TDS in the government account. On the other hand, the Income-tax department has shown helplessness in not refunding the amount on the sole ground that the details of the TDS did not match with the details shown in Form 26AS. There is a presumption that the deductor has deposited TDS amount in the government account especially when the deductor is a government department. By denying the benefit of TDS to the Petitioner because of the fault of the deductor causes not only harassment and inconvenience, but also makes the assessee feel cheated. There is no fault on the part of the Petitioner. The fault, if any, lay with the deductor. The mismatching is not attributable to the assessee.

The department must refund the amount within 3 weeks with interest. The department must also pay costs of Rs. 25,000 to the Petitioner.

CBDT Circular On Extension Of Due Date For Filing Refund Claims

The CBDT has issued Circuar 04/2014 dated 10.02.2014 pointing out that a large number of returns have become non-est as ITR-V was not furnished within the due date. As a result the refund claims have not been processed. In order to mitigate the hardships of taxpayers pertaining to non-receipt of tax refunds, the CBDT has extended u/s 119(2)(a) the date for filing ITR-V for AYs 2009-10, 2010-11 and 2011-12 to 31.03.2014. The time-frame under the second proviso to s. 143(1) for issuing the Intimation has been extended to 6 months from the end of the month in which ITR-V is received.