Your Taxes

I work in Bengaluru. For the AY 2010-11, an outstanding demand for ₹31,000 was raised by the tax department. However, I had paid my full tax dues for that period, which I also verified by comparing with the 26AS statement.

When I contacted the CPC, they told me the claim was made by the local assessment officer in Bengaluru and hence I had to talk to him.

I submitted my returns and 26AS papers to the Aayakar Seva Kendra, which gave me an acknowledgement number. This was in May 2015. However, no action has hence been taken after that. How can I sort this out?

Mahesh

The first and the foremost thing that you would need to do is to ascertain the reason for the tax demand. This would be available in the intimation under Section 143(1) that you would have received once your return is processed by CPC/jurisdictional officer. In case you have not received this, you can request for reissue of the same either through an online request (to CPC) or by making a physical application with the jurisdictional officer.

After ascertaining the reason for the demand, if you disagree (based on appropriate reasons and supported by documentation), you can take up the matter with the concerned officer.

Based on the information shared, we understand that you have already submitted the rectification request along with the supporting documentation with the jurisdictional tax officer in May 2015 on which no action has been taken till date. Now, you could submit an online response to the outstanding demand by logging into your account in the e-filing portal and providing reasons for the same.

This response would then be forwarded to the jurisdictional tax officer for further action. Filing an online response is necessary, as failure to do this may result in adjustment of any refund due to you (for a different year) against the outstanding demand. Further, the tax office could initiate proceedings to recover the demand.

Even after the aforementioned process, if there is no closure to the demand, you could meet the officer in person along with the documents filed, explain the facts and request for negation of demand.

It would be worth mentioning that the Central Board of Direct Taxes has recently issued directives to the tax officers to act on online responses filed by the tax payers within 30 days.

Though this relates to returns processed during financial year 2015-16, one could expect speedy resolutions to issues concerning outstanding demand, based on this directive.

The writer is Partner, Deloitte, Haskins and Sells LLP. Send your queries to taxtalk@thehindu.co.in

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