In a pilot project, CBDT to send online notices to taxpayers

The project would be launched in five non-corporate charges at Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Chennai

Starting Monday, the income tax department will experiment with paperless communications with assessees. These would include notices, questionnaires to personal income tax assessees and responses from them.

A pilot project would be launched in five non-corporate charges at Delhi, Mumbai, Bengaluru, Ahmedabad and Chennai. The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) plans to start with a hundred cases in each of the charges where scrutiny proceedings are conducted electronically. These cases fall under the pilot project only after obtaining the consent of taxpayers, following which the officers of the department can interact with taxpayers from their official e-mail addresses.

By receiving information and sending responses on this new platform, taxpayers no longer need to visit income tax offices, especially among the smaller cases involving limited issues, where he or she can provide details to the assessing officer without physically having to turn up.

Currently, income tax department uses third party information such as cash in bank, investment in mutual funds etc to identify any cases of tax evasion. These are called annual information returns. The CBDT would use these cases for this pilot project.