New Delhi: Many people become anxious at the mere mention of an Income Tax Notice. But there is nothing so scary about it. The Income Tax Department frequently sends letters to taxpayers for a variety of reasons. The failure to file an income tax return (ITR) or the submission of a flawed return could be the causes for receiving the notification.

If the taxpayer makes an error or forgets to input some crucial information when completing an ITR, the return may be deemed faulty. The Income Tax Department notifies the taxpayer pursuant to Section 139(9) to correct the inaccuracies in the “Defective” ITR.

Here are three crucial details about the notice of a defective income tax return and what happens if you don’t react to it:

Your ITR for the relevant Assessment Year will be regarded as invalid if you fail to respond to the Income Tax notification for a faulty return. In this situation, the tax office will assume that you have not filed your return and will not process your refund, if any.

You have 15 days from the date you receive the tax department’s notice to fix any defects after obtaining the Section 139(9) defective return notice. By sending an email to the Assessing Officer, you can request an extension of the deadline (A.O.)

A return can be deficient if, among other things, the tax details were not filed, TDS was claimed but the corresponding income was not offered for tax, taxes were not paid or the tax paid and the amount reported in the ITR did not match, an audit report was not completed, the books of accounts were not completed, the ITR was not completed, etc.

For Assessment Year 2022–2023, the deadline for filing an income tax return was July 31, 2022. Till September 11, 2022, more than 6.16 crore ITRs for the tax year 2022–23 had been filed, according to information available on the income tax website at the time of writing. Of these, taxpayers have confirmed more than 5.47 returns, while the department has processed more than 5.08 crore returns.