Arnav Pandya
One of the troubles for income taxpayers in recent times has been that they had to undertake several steps in the process of completion of their income tax return filing. The first step involves the work that has to be done online. After which there is also the need to undertake a physical process in the role of signing a form (ITR V) and then sending this to the tax department. Many times this part of the process ran into trouble if the signed form was not received at the tax department’s end. This was significant because of the fact that if this part of the process was not completed then the return would be considered to not have been filed. Now there is a step that is proposed by the government which can ensure that there is no problem on the online filing front and that the entire process will be truly online. Here is a closer look at the conditions and what needs to be done.

Aadhar number

Currently there is just one way in which the tax payer can ensure that they do not have to post the signed copy of the form which is known as ITR V to the tax department. This would happen if they sign the tax return form using a digital signature. Very few people have a digital signature and this means that the normal individual has to undertake the process of ensuring that they sign the required form and send it within the time period available. More than the process of sending the form it is the issue of ensuring that this is received and recorded with the tax department that is important as unless this is done it will be considered as if the taxpayer has not filed his return.

This is now sought to be tackled by bringing the Aadhar number into play for the verification process. Under the new proposed guidelines the tax payer would have to use their Aadhar number for the verification process which will be done online. Once this is complete then a one time password would be sent to the individual that would have to be entered and this will then end the income tax return filing.

Simplification

A closer look at the details that have been proposed shows that there is a lot of simplification that will be present. On one side there will be the use of the Aadhar number which is used for a lot of other purposes also and hence this will not require extra effort as the number is already issued to the individual. The other thing is that this will be done online so this will ease the procedure and also the one time password that will be sent will be done on the mobile phone. The details about the mobile numbers are present for the individual and hence there is no need to once again go and complete requirements for this purpose. On the whole when the whole thing is looked at carefully then it shows that there will be an element of simplification for the tax payer and it will save them a lot of worry in terms of what will happen with their return and how they will complete their return filing process.

For the taxpayer there will be an added incentive to ensure that they are able to authenticate the details online itself and complete the whole process without having to resort to the physical activity of signing forms. This will eliminate the worry about the completion of the process and the whole thing will actually become online in the true sense when this is done.