Income Tax Department Sends Intimation Notices To 22,000 Taxpayers Over Mismatch of ITRs

The income tax department has sent out over intimation notices to over 22,000 taxpayers, including salaried and high net worth individuals, as deductions do not match the information furnished in their Form 16 or Annual Information Statement (AIS) or the data available with the Income Tax Department.

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According to The Economic Times report, all the notices were sent in the last 15 days, for the tax returns filed for assessment year 2023-24. Around 12,000 notices were sent out to salaried taxpayers as there were differences between tax deductions claimed in their returns and department's own data exceeding ₹50,000.

The department also sent out over 8,000 notices to taxpayers who had filed returns under Hindu Undivided Family (HUF) where income disparity between the return filed and data with the department was over ₹50 lakh. And about 900 high-net worth individual taxpayers received notices where a disparity of Rs 5 crore was found.

In general, the core data analytics process has detected discrepancies and unusual patterns in the tax returns of approximately 200,000 taxpayers. These disparities involve inconsistencies between the income declarations, expenditures, or bank account information provided by the taxpayers and the data gathered by the department through transactions linked to their bank or UPI accounts.

"This is the first intimation notice. Only if taxpayers do not respond to it or fail to provide any clarification, a demand notice would be processed," income tax department official was quoted as saying by ET.

The official further added that the taxpayers can pay the due tax with an updated return with interest or provide a detailed explanation about it. It also highlighted that in certain instances, taxpayers missed out on reporting capital gains and dividend income, and they omitted any details regarding their additional bank accounts.

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"Digitisation of the economy has made it easier for them to track any wilful evasion and going forward better syncing of account aggregators will make evasion more difficult," another department official was quoted as saying by ET.