Many companies and tax deductor who are deducting TDS must have received notice u/s 133C of the Act from the Income tax department on their registered E-mail.
Relevant extract of Section 133C of the Income tax act is as under:
“133C. (1) The prescribed income-tax authority may, for the purposes of verification of information in its possession relating to any person, issue a notice to such person requiring him, on or before a date to be specified therein, to furnish information or documents verified in the manner specified therein, which may be useful for, or relevant to, any inquiry or proceeding under this Act.”
The password to open such notice is TAN number of the deductor. In the notice year and name of the deductee will be mentioned.
The notice is being served on the deductor for AY 2021-22 or AY 2022-23 in relation to the feedback being provided by deductee in AIS/ TIS wherein the deductee i.e. the person whose TDS has been deducted is either responding that the information is either fully incorrect or partly incorrect.
Now, the notice is being sent asking the deductor i.e. the person who has deducted TDS to reply as to whether the feedback provided by the deductee is correct or not.
Deductor can access the reporting portal of Income tax department by first logging into E-filing portal through TAN and then under the services you will find an option for Reporting portal and then select Others. Once you are redirected to Reporting portal you will find the names of the person which was also mentioned in notice.
You can download the required utility from Reporting portal and the xml file to have a look at the details of the notice as to which amount is rejected by deductee. Further, you could submit response online itself on Reporting portal or upload response using the utility available under download section of Reporting portal.
Please note that the reporting portal is working properly as it mostly marks you logged out in few minutes or seconds and hence one is unable to download utility or submit response. E-filing portal team or income tax team has not been able to resolve this issue as yet to help smoothen the process of responding to such notices. Further, in the notice no penalty has been prescribed in case of failure to respond.
One the remedy which one could take to respond to such notice is to write a letter to the jurisdictional assessing officer for TDS, stating the response to respective notice and mentioning that the portal is not working.
Please comment below if anyone has any better solution for helping others.