What to do when you get an income tax notice

Do this before you panic, before you pay anything and before you forward the document to an accountant. The e-filing portal runs a service called Authenticate Notice/Order issued by ITD, available from the Quick Links on the home page. It is a pre-login service — the department's user manual states plainly that you do not need to log in, and that it is open to registered and unregistered users alike.

There are two ways to run the check. If the document carries a Document Identification Number, choose the DIN option and enter the DIN and a mobile number. If it does not, choose the PAN option and enter the PAN, the document type, the year type, the date of issue and a mobile number. Either way the portal sends a one-time password. The manual notes the OTP is valid for fifteen minutes and you get three attempts.

The mobile number does not have to be the one registered against your PAN. The department's FAQ is explicit that you may choose to receive the OTP on any mobile number accessible to you — which matters when the notice reaches a family member, or when the number on the profile belongs to a consultant you no longer use.

A genuine document returns the DIN and the date of issue. A fake one returns "No record found for the given criteria" or "No record found for the given Document Number". That second outcome is the whole point of the exercise. The department's FAQ states that every communication issued on or after 1 October 2019 must bear a unique DIN, and that documents lacking one are treated as invalid and non est in law, requiring no response.

This is the defence against the seasonal wave of refund-phishing. The pattern is familiar: an SMS or email claiming a refund has been approved, a link to a page that looks like the portal, and a form asking for bank credentials. The department does not ask for bank passwords, card numbers or OTPs, and a real refund is credited to the account you pre-validated on the portal without any further action from you. Never act on a link in a message — open incometax.gov.in yourself and look under Pending Actions.

One caveat worth knowing. The DIN requirement has a narrow exception for manual communication in defined circumstances, where the reason and a written approval from a senior authority must be recorded on the document itself. If you are handed a paper communication with no DIN and no such endorsement, authenticate it anyway, and if the portal shows no record, take the matter to your jurisdictional officer rather than replying to whoever handed it to you.

Log in to the e-filing portal and go to the Dashboard, then Pending Actions. Three separate destinations sit under or alongside it, and they are not interchangeable.

e-Proceedings is the main one. The department's e-Proceedings user manual lists what appears there: defective notices under section 139(9), adjustments under section 245, prima facie adjustments under section 143(1)(a), suo-moto rectifications under section 154, general notices issued by an Assessing Officer or other tax authority, and "Seek for Clarification" communications. It is also where you download the notice PDF itself, and where an authorised representative is added or withdrawn.

Response to Outstanding Demand is the second. The manual for that service describes it as the place where demands raised against your PAN are listed and answered, and where you download the latest section 245 notice or an earlier one by selecting the relevant financial year. If your problem is a refund that vanished into an old demand, this is the screen, not e-Proceedings.

The Compliance Portal is the third. The department's View and Submit Compliance manual describes single sign-on from the e-filing dashboard — Pending Actions, then Compliance Portal — into services covering the Annual Information Statement, e-Campaigns, e-Verifications, e-Proceedings and DIN authentication. e-Campaigns there fall into three buckets: Significant Transactions, Non-Filing of Return and High Value Transactions. Nothing about these appears on the main e-filing dashboard beyond the link, which is why they are so widely missed.

Check the contact details on your profile at the same time. Every one of these workflows notifies you by email and SMS against the address and number on the PAN's profile. A stale email — a former employer, a consultant you have parted with, an address you no longer read — is the most common reason a taxpayer discovers a notice only when the demand is already enforced.

If the communication names an Assessing Officer, or if you need to correspond outside the online modules, the portal runs a Know Your Jurisdictional Assessing Officer service. The department states that no registration or login is required for it, and that it returns the officer responsible for your PAN together with your ward or circle. The same page notes the department's aim of delivering taxpayer services facelessly and online, so needing the JAO at all is the exception rather than the rule.

The section quoted on the document is the single most useful thing on it. It tells you what stage of the process you are at, who issued it, and what the reply is meant to contain. The sections below are the ones ordinary taxpayers meet most often, described by what they do rather than by their statutory wording.

A section 143(1) intimation is the department's computation of your return set against your own. It is issued after processing and it is not, in itself, an allegation of anything. It ends in one of three states — agreement, a refund, or a demand — and reading it is a matter of comparing the two columns and finding the line where they diverge. A great many people file this away unread and then cannot explain, two years later, where a demand came from.

A prima facie adjustment under section 143(1)(a) comes before that, and it is a proposal rather than a conclusion. The e-Proceedings manual describes the screen as showing the variances the Centralized Processing Center has identified in the return you filed, with an Agree or Disagree choice against each proposed adjustment individually. Respond variance by variance; a blanket disagreement without figures rarely survives.

A defective-return notice under section 139(9) says the return as filed cannot be processed until something is fixed. The department's FAQ lists the usual defects: TDS credit claimed without reporting the corresponding income, receipts that do not match Form 26AS, a nil income figure alongside a computed tax liability, a name that does not match the PAN database, and missing financial statements where business income is declared.

An intimation under section 245 proposes to set a refund due to you off against a demand outstanding from an earlier year. A section 133(6) communication, or a general notice from an Assessing Officer, asks you for information or documents — sometimes about your own affairs, sometimes about a transaction with someone else. An e-campaign or AIS nudge is softer still: the department is telling you it holds information that does not appear in your return, and inviting you to explain or file.

Then there are the serious ones. A reassessment notice under section 148 opens an earlier year on the basis that income escaped assessment, and it is preceded by a show-cause stage at which you are entitled to reply before any notice issues. A demand notice under section 156 is the instrument that makes a sum payable. These need professional help, and they need it inside the window on the paper rather than after it closes.

This is the most common notice an ordinary salaried or small-business filer will ever see, and it has the tightest published clock. The department's FAQ states you have fifteen days from receiving the notice to rectify the defects in the return you filed.

Open Pending Actions, then e-Proceedings, and click View Notice against the defective notice. The e-Proceedings manual describes downloading the notice PDF from that screen — do that first and read the defect description before touching anything else, because the defect is usually specific and narrow. The most frequent ones, per the department's FAQ, are TDS credit claimed without the matching income, receipts that do not tie to Form 26AS, a nil income figure sitting next to a computed liability, a name mismatch against the PAN database, and business income declared without the financial statements the form requires.

You then choose Agree or Disagree. If you agree, you upload a corrected JSON prepared in the appropriate ITR utility — the same form type, with the defect cured. If you disagree, the manual requires you to write the reason you disagree with the defect before you can submit. Either way a Transaction ID is generated on success, and that ID is your proof of response.

If fifteen days is genuinely not enough — the deductor has not issued the certificate, the accounts are not finalised, the accountant is unreachable — the department's FAQ confirms that you may seek an adjournment and request an extension. Ask before the window closes, not after. An adjournment sought inside the period is a routine administrative request; an explanation offered after the return has been treated as invalid is not.

Understand what happens if you say nothing. The department's own answer is blunt: the return may be treated as invalid, with consequences including penalty, interest, loss of the ability to carry losses forward, and loss of specific exemptions. A return treated as invalid is a return never filed, which means every downstream thing that depends on it — the refund, the carry-forward, the loan file, the visa application — falls with it.

Two practical warnings. First, the department states that once a response is submitted it cannot be updated or withdrawn, so review the corrected JSON before you upload rather than after. Second, you may authorise another person to respond on your behalf, and the e-Proceedings service allows an Authorized Representative to be added or withdrawn — but the authorisation has to exist on the portal before the deadline, not be arranged around it.

A prima facie adjustment under section 143(1)(a) is answered inside e-Proceedings. The manual describes a screen listing the variances CPC has identified between your return and the information it holds, with each item expandable to show the detail and each item carrying its own Agree or Disagree choice. Work through them one at a time. When every item has a response you declare and submit, and the portal returns a Transaction ID and an Acknowledgment Number.

The discipline that matters here is evidentiary rather than legal. Where you disagree, the useful reply names the document that proves your figure — the interest certificate, the Form 16A, the contract, the sale deed — rather than asserting that the department is wrong. Where you agree, agreeing early is cheaper than arguing badly and losing later.

A section 245 intimation is a different animal and lives on a different screen. It proposes to absorb a refund you are owed into a demand the department says is outstanding from an earlier year. You answer it through Pending Actions, then Response to Outstanding Demand — the same screen where every demand standing against your PAN is listed. The service also lets you download the latest section 245 notice, or one issued earlier, by selecting the relevant financial year.

The response options are set out in the department's manual. You can accept that the demand is correct and unpaid, in which case the portal routes you to e-Pay Tax. You can say the demand is correct but already paid, in which case you add the challan details — payment type, amount, BSR code, serial number and date — and attach supporting documentation as a PDF of up to 5 MB. Or you can disagree, either with the whole demand or with part of it, selecting from the reasons the portal offers and entering the details each reason requires.

Choose carefully, because the department's guidance notes that once you submit a response recording that the demand is correct, you cannot disagree with it later. That is an irreversible admission made through a dropdown, and it is made by people every week who read "demand is correct" as "I have seen this demand".

Old demands are frequently ghosts. Tax paid against a challan that was never mapped to the right assessment year, a credit the deductor filed late, an arithmetic adjustment reversed on appeal but never removed from the system — all of these show as live demands until somebody responds. The Demand Management Facilitation Centre exists for exactly this and is reachable on 1800 309 0130 or at [email protected]. A demand that has been sitting unanswered for years is not evidence that it is right.

Whatever you decide, decide something. The set-off proceeds if you do not answer, and recovering a refund already absorbed into an old demand is a far longer road than objecting to the proposal while it is still a proposal.

The Compliance Portal is where the department tells you what third parties have said about you. Reach it through the e-filing dashboard — Pending Actions, then Compliance Portal — and the single sign-on carries your session across. The department's manual lists the services available there: the Annual Information Statement, e-Campaigns, e-Verifications, e-Proceedings and DIN authentication.

e-Campaigns come in three flavours: Significant Transactions, Non-Filing of Return and High Value Transactions. The trigger is information the department has received from a reporting entity — a Statement of Financial Transactions filing by a bank, mutual fund or registrar, a TDS or TCS return, or a foreign remittance report. The campaign is not an assessment. It is a structured invitation to confirm, correct or explain, and confirming or correcting it early is what stops the matter escalating into a formal proceeding.

The underlying data sits in the Annual Information Statement. The department describes AIS as a comprehensive view of the information it holds about a taxpayer, displaying transaction-level detail across categories that include TDS and TCS, statement of financial transaction entries, tax payments, and demands and refunds. Its stated objectives are to show you the complete picture before you file, to promote voluntary compliance and to deter non-compliance — which is a fair description of what an e-campaign is doing when it arrives.

The Taxpayer Information Summary sits above it, aggregating each category and showing both the value the system processed and the value derived after your feedback or the reporting source's confirmation. That aggregation is what feeds the prefilled figures in your return, which is why leaving a wrong AIS entry uncorrected quietly poisons next year's filing as well as this year's.

Feedback is given entry by entry. Open the item under TDS/TCS Information, SFT Information or Other Information, click the feedback button against it, choose the applicable option, enter the detail and submit. The department confirms that the feedback then displays alongside the reported figure, the modified value becomes visible, the activity history updates, an Acknowledgement Receipt is generated and email and SMS confirmations are sent. Keep that receipt: it is the dated proof that you flagged the entry, which is exactly what you will want if the same figure resurfaces in a proceeding two years later.

One point people miss: feedback is not the end of the conversation. The department's own description refers to the value derived after considering taxpayer feedback or source confirmation on that feedback — meaning the reporting entity can be asked to stand behind or withdraw what it filed. If a bank has reported a deposit that was never yours, the durable fix is the bank correcting its filing, and your feedback is what starts that.

Note also that from assessment year 2023-24 onwards Form 26AS shows only TDS and TCS data through TRACES, with the wider picture living in AIS. Anyone still reconciling only against 26AS before filing is reconciling against half the file the department holds. Queries specifically about AIS, TIS, SFT responses, e-campaigns and e-verification go to the dedicated helpline on 1800 103 4215, not the general e-filing number.

A general notice from an Assessing Officer — including an information call under section 133(6) — is answered through the same e-Proceedings screen, but the response format is different and it deserves more care than a dropdown.

The manual describes two response modes. A Partial Response allows multiple submissions against the same notice, which is what you want when the documents are arriving in instalments. A Full Response is a single submission and closes your side of the exchange. Choose Partial if there is any chance more material is coming; you cannot un-close a Full Response.

You may add a written response or remarks of up to 4,000 characters and attach supporting documents of up to 5 MB each. Four thousand characters is roughly six hundred words, which is enough for a clear narrative and nothing more — so put the argument in the remarks and the proof in the attachments, named so an officer can tell what each file is without opening it.

If you need more time, the service includes a Seek/View Adjournment facility: you propose dates and give reasons, and a Transaction ID is generated. Where the officer permits it, you can also request a video conference. Both are ordinary requests, both are recorded, and both are far better than letting a date pass in silence.

The architecture behind all of this is faceless by design. The department states its aim of providing taxpayer services facelessly and online, and that a taxpayer with no filing issues typically has no need to contact a jurisdictional officer at all. Where you do need to know who holds your file, the Know Your JAO service returns the officer and the ward or circle assigned to your PAN, with no registration or login required.

There is a live complication in 2026 that no earlier guide covers. India now has two direct tax statutes in play — notices concerning older years quote sections of the Income-tax Act 1961, while the Income-tax Act 2025 governs going forward. The department maintains a dedicated resource hub for the new Act with FAQ sets grouped by topic, including sets on the objective and scope of the new Act, reassessment proceedings, appeals and revisions, income tax returns, forms, tax payments, TDS compliance and set-off and carry-forward of losses.

Practically, that means the section number on your notice has to be read together with the year it concerns. Do not assume a section reference you recognise from an older notice means the same thing on a newer one, and check the department's Income-tax Act 2025 hub — particularly the reassessment and appeals FAQ sets — before you rely on a time limit or a procedure you remember from before.

Not every wrong outcome is an appeal. Choosing the wrong remedy wastes the window for the right one, so match the remedy to the type of error before you file anything.

Rectification is for a mistake apparent from the record in an order passed by CPC — an arithmetic slip, a credit that was ignored, a schedule read wrongly. The portal offers three request types: reprocess the return, correct a tax credit mismatch, and correct return data. The rectification section carries thirty FAQs, a user manual and two video walkthroughs covering the tax credit mismatch and reprocessing requests. Rectification will not help where the disagreement is substantive rather than clerical.

A grievance is for a process failure rather than a wrong decision — a response submitted and never acknowledged, a refund stuck after processing, a demand that survives a response, a module that will not accept a submission. The portal has a Submit Grievance facility with a tracking view, four FAQs and a user manual. Raise it in writing on the portal rather than by phone, because the written grievance creates a tracked record with a reference number and the phone call does not.

Escalate to CPGRAMS if the department's own channel goes quiet. CPGRAMS is the Centralized Public Grievance Redress and Monitoring System, available around the clock and connected to central and state ministries and departments. Each grievance gets a unique registration ID for tracking, and where the citizen rates the resolution as poor there is an appeal mechanism that can be tracked against the same number. Note its exclusions: it does not take RTI matters or matters that are sub judice or before a court.

An appeal is the remedy where the department has decided something and you say the decision is wrong. The first appeal is filed in Form 35 to the Commissioner or Joint Commissioner (Appeals) by any assessee or deductor aggrieved by an Assessing Officer's order. The department's manual sets the time limit at thirty days from the service of the demand notice or the intimation of the order appealed against, and gives the fee by assessed total income: ₹250 where the total income determined is up to ₹1,00,000, ₹500 between ₹1,00,000 and ₹2,00,000, and ₹1,000 above that.

Prepare the appeal properly. The manual lists what you need: a copy of the order — downloadable from Pending Actions, e-Proceedings — the demand notice, records of tax paid, details of any other appeal pending, and the grounds of appeal with supporting evidence. You need an active PAN or TAN account on the portal with valid credentials, and either a registered, unexpired Digital Signature Certificate or an Electronic Verification Code to verify the submission. The form allows filing either with or without a DIN, and a Transaction ID and downloadable acknowledgement follow on success.

Appeals at this level are decided under the faceless appeal architecture, and the department's Income-tax Act 2025 hub carries a dedicated FAQ set on appeals and revisions for years governed by the new statute. Read that before you assume the timetable you used last time still applies — and where the sum at stake or the reasoning is significant, get a chartered accountant or tax counsel to draft the grounds. Grounds of appeal are the one document in this whole process that cannot easily be fixed later.

Whichever route you take, ring the right desk. The department publishes them separately: e-filing, returns, forms, intimation, rectification and refunds on 1800 103 0025 or 1800 419 0025 between 08:00 and 20:00 Monday to Friday; AIS, TIS, SFT responses, e-campaigns and e-verification on 1800 103 4215 between 09:30 and 18:00; TDS statements, Form 16 and Form 26AS through TRACES on 1800 103 0344; and outstanding demand through the Demand Management Facilitation Centre on 1800 309 0130 or [email protected]. Anything that fits none of those goes to [email protected]. Keep the Transaction ID for every response you submit — it is the only evidence, other than the notice itself, that the exchange happened at all.