Income Tax Department to Ignore Mismatch below Rs 1 Lakh in TDS Claims

A circular from the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has directed tax officers to ignore the mismatch between the TDS amount stated in Income-tax returns and the TDS credit reflected in the department's system, if the difference does not exceed . 1 lakh.
In such a circumstance, the TDS claim of the taxpayer has to be accepted without verification, according to the circular.

The significance of this circular is that the department cannot withhold the refunds, merely on the ground of discrepancy in the TDS claim in the return filed by the taxpayer and the TDS credit reflected on the department's system, if the difference is less than . 1 lakh.

Besides, the circular will put an end to the practice of tax officers forcing the taxpayers to pay up the difference whenever there is a mismatch between the TDS credit claimed by the taxpayer and the sum computed by the taxman.

The anomaly, more often than not, occurs due to technical problems of the department's system, but taxpayers faced an additional tax demand or delay in the issue of refunds for no fault of theirs.

The CBDT circular will have a positive bearing on the process of refunds that began from the second week of April. The CBDT has given a green signal to the department to begin the issue of refunds in the month of April itself. An I-T official said "We expect a refund outgo of about . 10,000 crore the first month of the current fiscal itself " . Last fiscal, thanks to a new initiative of the then CBDT chairman, at least . 50,000 crore — which accounted for about 50 % of last year's total refunds — was issued by the end of April. The I-T officials belie a substantial portion of the refund dues will be issued by the end of April.