IT alerts see big jump, 3 million taxpayers asked to explain discrepancy in returns

financialexpress.com:

The Income Tax (IT) department has sent alerts through text messages and emails to around 3 million salaried taxpayers across the country, highlighting the apparent mismatch between TDS (tax deducted at source) and the refunds claimed by them in their revised tax returns, an official told FE.

“Since December 31 (2023) was the last day of filing revised returns…we have sent alerts seeking explanation for the discrepancies in ther returns filed for assessment years 2023-24,” the official said.

This represents a big jump in the number of such alerts being sent, and the increased monitoring is partly attributed to a special unit opened in Mysuru in October 2022 for centralised matching and cross-verification of the documents.

The department gave an opportunity to taxpayers to correct inaccuracies in reported income (if any), deductions, bank details, personal information, omission of certain income, or mismatch of income between the original return and form 26AS/Annual Information Statement, and file revised returns.

On December 26, the department, in a post on X, said that the alerts sent are to facilitate the taxpayers and make them aware of the information available with the department regarding the transactions reported by the reporting entities during the year.

“It is not a notice sent to all taxpayers, but is an advisory sent in only those cases where there is an apparent mismatch between disclosures in the ITR & information as received from the reporting entity,” the post said.

The official quoted above mentioned that in case the taxpayers don’t act on the alert, then the department shall issue notices to them on a case by case basis.

Experts say the common mismatch is due to the difference between the investments