The format of Income Tax Return (ITR) Verification Form (ITR-V) has been changed this year. The new ITR-V now contains only basic details of a taxpayer – viz. Name, PAN, ITR Form Number, the section under which the ITR has been filed and the e-filing Acknowledgement Number.

However, details like your income, deductions, taxes paid, tax payable, tax refund etc have been removed from the ITR-V.

Background

Be it verified or unverified, ITR-V was the sole document that was issued at the time of e-filing of return of income and was used as ITR proof.

Even after commencement of issuance of Income Tax Return Acknowledgement on verification of ITR-V, both the documents were used as ITR proofs, as there was very little difference in the formats of the two documents.

To disqualify the unverified ITR-V as a valid ITR proof, the following was mentioned in the document last year that – “This is not a proof for having filed the Return”.

This year also, the Income Tax Department has continued the practice of issuing the both documents, but further changed the format of ITR-V by removing the details of income and income tax paid.

Advantage

Unverified returns of income can no longer be used as a valid proof of having filed the ITR.

If the ITR-V goes missing in transit to CPC Bangalore, it can’t be misused due to lack of income and tax details.

“This decision of the department must be appreciated because it not only prevents the fraud but also reduce the misuse of ITR-V. Earlier, fraudsters used to get illegal access of ITR-V of the honest taxpayers while the said documents were in transit (by post) and used the details of income and income tax paid for carrying out frauds. Now, fraudsters cannot use the ITR-V for carrying out frauds even if they get the illegal access of the same,” said CA Geetanshu Bhalla, Founder, The Virtual Compliance.

“I think this is a good system of not displaying the numbers. A lot of people manually sign the ITR-V and post it to CPC Bangalore. During the transit, it may get in the hands of wrong people, who may misuse the data. This is a part of data privacy,” said CA Karan Batra, Founder and CEO, CharteredClub.com.

Disadvantage

There is a concern that taxpayers cannot see the details of income and income tax uploaded on the income tax portal while doing the verification for the same. So, any mistake would go unnoticed and may invite trouble for the taxpayer.

“In my opinion, the uploaded income tax return file is available on the portal in PDF with the name ITR/Form which can be referred by the taxpayer in case of any doubt while verifying the return,” said Bhalla.

“A person can check the detailed ITR Form if he wants to verify the numbers,” said Arora.

Source : PTI