From 1st October 2019, Any communication from Income Tax Department without a computer generated DIN, be it a notice, letter, order and summon or any other correspondence,would be treated as invalid and shall be non est in law or deemed to be as if it has never been issued
The Documentation Identification Number (DIN) system of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has come into existence from today With the generation of about 17,500 communications with DIN on the very first day. This path breaking DIN system has been created as per the direction of Finance Minister Ms. Nirmala Sitharaman and from 1st October2019 onwards, every CBDT communication will have to have a documentation identification number.
Manual Communication in Exceptional Cases and Time limit of Upload
It would be pertinent to mention here that while specifying such exceptional circumstances the CBDT Circular related to DIN dated 14.08.2019 says that whenever any such manual communication would be issued, it would be necessarily required to specify reason of issuing such a communication without DIN along with the date of obtaining written approval of the Chief Commissioner/Director General of Income Tax in a particular format. Any communication which is not in conformity of with the prescribed guidelines shall be treated as invalid and non est in law.
CBDT has specified that any communication issued manually under exceptional circumstances would have to be uploaded and regularised on the system portal within 15 days of its issuance.
DIN for Pending Assessment Prior to DIN Related Circular
CBDT has also stated that all pending assessment proceedings, where notices were earlier issued manually, prior to the DIN related Circular dated 14.08.2019 coming into existence, all such cases would be identified and notices so sent would be uploaded on ITBA by the end of this month, i.e., by 31st Oct 2019.
Modi Effect
This is in pursuance of the directions by the Hon’ble Prime Minister in which he has asked the Department of Revenue to come up with specific measures to ensure that the honest taxpayers are not harassed and served better. It may be noted that earlier there have been some instances where it was not possible to maintain the audit trail of the manually issued communication which in some cases caused inconvenience to taxpayers sometime. However, with the present system of attaching a DIN to every notice or communication of CBDT would result in better services to taxpayers without any possible harassment.
Where to Check Authentication of Notice/ Communication
https://www1.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/e-FilingGS/Services/AUTHNoticeLink.html?lang=eng