*PAN DEACTIVATION BY INCOME TAX DEPARTMENT:*
The income tax department in its latest drive has started de-activating PAN of all income tax assesses who were allotted more than one PAN at anytime in the past.
Unfortunately, in many cases the PAN being deactivated is the PAN on which the assessees are filing their income tax returns. Once, the PAN is de-activated by the income tax department, the income tax e-filing login of the assessee also gets blocked and the PAN holder is not able to do anything on the Income Tax e-filing portal such as filing of Income Tax Returns, view intimations and respond electronically to various communications by the ITD.
Ques: What should be done in case the PAN is de-activated?
Ans: In case your Permanent Account Number (PAN) is de-activated then you need to do the following:
1) You need to write a letter to your jurisdictional AO in the Income Tax Department for activation of your PAN.
2) Following documents need to be attached to the letter for activation of PAN:
Indemnity Bond in favour of the Income Tax Deptt.
Copy of PAN on which the PAN holder is regularly filing the Income Tax Return.
Copy of last three years Income Tax Returns filed on the PAN de-activated.
It takes atleast 10-15 days for the Income Tax Department for re-activating the PAN after submission of letter to ITD.
Ques: I have received online intimation/mail regarding cash deposits during demonetization, how do I respond if my PAN is de-activated and I cannot login to the e-filing portal?
Ans: If you have received any intimation from the ITD for which an online response needs to be filed but your e-filing login is blocked then you need to approach your Jurisdictional AO for activation of your PAN ASAP as stated in the previous question.
Since, the re-activation of PAN by ITD takes some time therefore you can respond to the intimation manually by filing a response/letter to the jurisdictional AO.
Although, you might have filed the offline/manual response to the AO but you still need to ensure that you file the online response to the intimation as soon as your PAN is re-activated.
CA. C. V. PAWAR
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