Taxpayers can access an annual consolidated tax statement, Form 26AS from the Income Tax India website using their Permanent Account Number (PAN). The revamped Form 26AS will now come into effect from June 1, per a press release from the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT).
The revamped Form 26AS will contain information pertaining to shares & property transactions. With this, the Form 26AS will now be a comprehensive source of information relating to the payment of taxes, specific financial transactions, tax demands/refunds, and pending/completed tax proceedings of a taxpayer during a specific financial year. This move is bound to simplify the tax filing process, with the turnaround times for IT officials too improving dramatically as the information is now available from a single source, and fraudulent activities / hiding information will be reduced.
The specified transactions include purchase/sale of goods, property, works contract, services, investments, expenditure, loans, or deposits of value as prescribed, but not less than Rs. 50,000. Further, an enabling provision has been notified empowering the CBDT to authorize DG Systems or any other officer to upload in this form 26AS, information received from any other officer, the authority under any law. Thus any adverse action initiated or taken or found or order passed under any other law such as custom, GST, Benami Law, etc. including information about Turnover, import, export, etc. will also be put in this form 26AS so that not only the concerned taxpayer but also all the Income Tax authorities will know and have access to such information. This form 26AS will also provide information received by the Tax Department from any other country under the treaty /exchange of information about income or assets of the taxpayer located outside India. This form will also have a mobile number, email id, and Aadhar number of the taxpayer.
This will reflect real-time information, and be updated regularly within 3 months from the end of the month in which such information is received.
Thus, the new Form 26AS will now be a complete profile of the taxpayer for that particular year as against earlier Dorm 26AS which just provided information about taxes paid by way of TDS / TCS or self-assessment.
The implication of this new Form 26AS will be that banks, financial institutions or any other authority or customer, buyer, etc. while carrying out due diligence of the person/ corporate concerned will now ask for Form 26AS so as to be sure that there are not any major issues about such person/corporates.
