ITR 2022: What happens when you don’t respond to a defective Income Tax Return notice under Section 139(9)

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Consequences of defective income tax return: The mere mention of an Income Tax Notice rings an alarm bell for many people. But there is nothing so scary about it. It is a common practice for the Income Tax Department to send notices to taxpayers for multiple reasons. The reasons for sending the notice could be not filing the Income Tax Return (ITR) or filing a defective return.

A return can be considered defective if the taxpayer makes an error or misses entering some important information while filing ITR. The Income Tax Department sends its notice under Section 139 (9) to ask the taxpayer to rectify the errors in the “Defective” ITR.

Read More: ITR filing: Return filed before July 31 but not received refund yet? Here are the likely reasons

Here are three important points you should know about the defective income tax return notice and what happens when you don’t respond to the notice:

• If you don’t respond to the Income Tax notice for a defective return then your ITR for the relevant Assessment Year would be treated as an invalid return. In such a case, the tax department will consider that you have not filed your return and your refund, if any, will not be processed.
• After receiving the defective return notice under Section 139 )(), you should rectify the defect within 15 days from the receipt of notice from the tax department. You can apply for a deadline extension by writing to the Assessing Officer (A.O.)
• Some of the errors that make a return defective include: Details of tax paid not filed, TDS claimed but corresponding income not offered for tax, unpaid taxes or mismatch of tax paid in ITR, incomplete audit report, incomplete books of accounts, incomplete ITR etc.

Read More: ITR Filing: Filed Income Tax Return On Time But Did Not Get Refund Yet? Know Why It’s Happening

The Income Tax Return filing due date for Assessment Year 2022-23 was 31 July 2022. As per the data on the Income Tax website at the time of writing, over 6.16 crore ITRs for AY 2022-23 have been filed till 11 September 2022. Of these, more than 5.47 returns have been verified by taxpayers while over 5.08 crore returns have been processed by the department.