Finance Ministry launches new DIN system for I-T Dept notices

The Ministry of Finance introduced a new Documentation Identification Number (DIN) system of Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Tuesday, October 1 which will be immediately applicable. The Finance Minister took to Twitter to make the announcement. The move has been introduced to ensure greater accountability and transparency in tax administration.

About 17500 Communications with DIN Generated on the First day

An official press release says, “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.” Revenue Secretary Dr Ajay Bhushan Pandey said, “From today, 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-established in law or deemed to be as if it has never been issued. The DIN system would ensure greater accountability and transparency in tax administration.”

“Now from today onwards, all such communications with DIN would be verifiable on the e-filing portal and no communication would be issued manually without DIN except only if it is in the specified exceptional circumstances”, said Dr Pandey.

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PM Modi had asked the Department of Revenue to come with specific measures

The press release also states that the introduction of the new system is in pursuance of the directions by the Prime Minister in which he had asked the Department of Revenue to come up with specific measures to ensure that honest taxpayers are not harassed and served better. It also says 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 and 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.

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The full press release

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 now onwards every CBDT communication will have to have a documentation identification number.

Revenue Secretary Dr Ajay Bhushan Pandey said, “From today, 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 DIN system would ensure greater accountability and transparency in tax administration.”

“Now from today onwards, all such communications with DIN would be verifiable on the e-filing portal and no communication would be issued manually without DIN except only if it is in the specified exceptional circumstances”, said Dr Pandey.

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.

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.

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.

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