For the purpose of Income Tax Return filing, “Controller of Certifying Authorities” has amended the procedure to include “Permanent Account Number” in Digital Signatures.
Note that,
1. This change is with effect from August 01, 2010.
2. PAN is a NEW additional field in digital signature.
3. The old DSC may not contain this value, even though if you had given PAN while availing DSC before 01/08/2010.
4. PAN is optional, and DSC can be issued even without PAN. If the subscriber (user) intends to have PAN in it, he/she has to specifically intimate the issuer.
ITR filing with DSC:
In ITR e-filing website, filing with Digital signature remains almost similar. That is,
1. Register the DSC for particular login
2. Re-Select the same DSC while uploading the XML
Earlier procedure:
DSC was not containing the encrypted PAN value of the assessee. So, in case of firms/companies, while registering the DSC at the website, it should have got at least one earlier ITR XML uploaded/accepted and “name of DSC holder” should match with any of the director/key-person list in earlier accepted-XML return. [In case of individuals, name should match with “PAN Name in ITD database” and email ID in DSC should match with email ID in website profile]
Further while uploading the XML, the selected DSC number (unique number of DSC stored in website while registering) should match with the one used for registering. Secondly, “name of DSC holder” should match with the “Name in ITD database” for the PAN mentioned in verification part of ITR-5/6.
Major limitation here was for first-time digitally signing assessee, where he should have earlier return. Further “Matching of name” was practical problem reported by several assessees.
New procedure:
The above limitations have increased due to mandatory Digitally signing of ITR-6. To overcome this issue, CCA, through the request from ITD, has introduced a new filed in DSC issuing. In this, DSC can have PAN encoded in itself, so that it can help ITR filing.
While registration, it asks the user to enter the PAN. This PAN should match with the DSC encrypted PAN. (No other matching is done here). While uploading, selected-DSC should have the encrypted PAN matching with the PAN mentioned in ITR verification part.
With effect from:
The technical guidelines were issued by CCA, as early as at Dec-2009. With effect from August 2010, all Certifying authorities may issue DSC with encrypted PAN.
Note that,
1. Assessees can also use earlier DSC, which has no encrypted PAN. In such case, “name matching” system continues as earlier.
2. Assessees, at their interest, can contact their current certifying authorities for upgradation / re-issue of DSC with the encrypted PAN. The certifying authorities can follow their own procedures for this purpose.
3. New assessees taking DSC are recommended to take with encrypted PAN.
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