Indian Income Tax authorities have been making more of the services online. For many years now you could file your returns online through Income Tax India EFiling website, if you are signing it with your Digital Signature your return process is completed entirely online. If you don’t have a Digital Signature then you have the option of printing out the ITR (Income Tax Return) form and sending it by post to Central Processing Centre (CPC) in Bengaluru, where it will be manually checked and your return filing be marked completed, this normally takes a week or two.
In my case since I own a business, for which you need to compulsory file returns along with Digital Signature, I have one and renew it every year. I used to file my Individual ITR using the same Digital Signature saving me the trouble of printing and posting the return. This year for some reason my Auditor was not able to file my return using the Digital Signature, leaving me to the manual steps for verification. Luckily Income Tax department have introduced 3 alternative ways to E-Verify your ITR without the need for manual posting. They are:
- Mobile based EVC (Electronic Verification Code),
- Aadhaar OTP and
- E-Filing through Net Banking
Details for doing the above with instructions are available in this guide from Income Tax.
My Aadhaar was not getting mapped to my Income Tax PAN, so I went with the third option (Net Banking). To my surprise the process was super easy and took less than a minute. You had to login to your bank portal, select Pay Tax, E-Verify Option, select from the options provided, confirm and you are done. Below is the screen I got after the successful E-Verification.
