Income Tax: How to authenticate notice issued by the department? A step-by-step guide

livemint.com:

Have you ever received any income tax notice mentioning a defect in your return? This is sufficient to send a chill down the spine of a ‘common man’ or a ‘common woman’. However, anxiety is not going to take you anywhere. First of all, you need to authenticate the notice sent from the department before you act upon it.

Here we explain the step-by-step process to do so:

One way to check the authenticity of notice sent by the tax department is to cross check the email ID from where it is sent. The tax department sends all its communications from its official ID which ends with incometax.gov.in such as intimations@cpc.incometax.gov.in.

Alternatively, you can authenticate the veracity of notice by visiting the tax department website.

You need to go to the department website on the link which can be clicked here.

On the left-hand side, one can see a panel of quick links. Here you will have to click the section that reads" authenticate notice/ order issued by ITD'' as shown in the image below.

Once you click the section, you can take the following steps as described below.

This is how you can authenticate the I-T department’s notice/ order department.

I. In case you don't have the document number:

You have to enter PAN, document type, assessment year, mobile number (linked to tax department details), date of issue of notice or order. Remember that this is valid for assessment years 2011-12 and following years only.

II. In case you have the document number:

Enter the document identification number and mobile number.

In the second step, you will receive a six-digit OTP on your registered mobile number.

Enter the OTP to proceed to submit.

If there are no records in the income tax department, the system will reflect ‘No record