Income-tax india e-filing website email, mobile contact updataion problem. Avoid illicit and illegal tricks and tips to solve the problem
Excel for
Chartered Accountants
As we all know by now that income tax department has made it mandatory that every assessee must update its own mobile and email contact details in his profile.
The communication of the department states the objective of this exercise as under:
“It is noticed that many registered users are not having authenticated contact detailsin e-Filing or may have provided details of other persons for convenience. This prevents the Department from interacting directly with taxpayers on their personalemail and Mobile” read more .. >>
As per the new requirement every assessee who wish to e-file his/her returns is required to provide an email id and one mobile number which would be considered as valid primary email and mobile no. All future communications shall be
To my surprise, for past few days, I have been reading mails, blogs suggesting some tricks and tips (I guess illegal too) on how to defeat the very purpose of the exercise of the Income Tax Department. The article suggesting such illicit ways are even using lofty words like “Good News”, “Solution to restricted use of email ID”.
Much to my chagrin and sheer disappointment, I read mails of even chartered accountants projecting such legitimate exercise as a “problem” or “fear” of the profession.
Why would any professional regard it as a fear or problem is beyond my comprehension. Also why would any professional like to control something which they do not or should not own? I have seen occasions when professionals feel burdened for nothing and treat themselves as porters than the facilitators. On the contrary, every time a new procedure/process is initiated, I would call it a professional opportunity and view our job as facilitator only.
It must be considered and treated as a Professional Opportunity and not a problem or fear
We must treat any new procedure like this a professional opportunity and not a problem or fear. How I treat it as a professional opportunity and how we should we proceed with this initiative of Income Tax Department is as under:
- Communicate all clients of the new requirement of updation and suggest them to update it. Charge a suitable fee for this communication.
- Charge a suitable fee, where the client does have an email but ask you to do the favour of updation.
- If an assessee do not possess an email id, you can provide service of maintaining an email id for him.
Note: Should not the assessee be burdened financially for this exercise, let there be few million writings of the assessee reach the income tax department to make the department realize about the practical aspect of the thing. But no ways we resort to illegal means to bypass the exercise.
