Many employees of Tata Consultancy Services (TCS), India’s largest IT services firm, have recently received demand notices from the income-tax department concerning alleged discrepancies in their tax deduction at source (TDS) claims. These notices request payments ranging from Rs 50,000 to Rs 1.5 lakh, moneycontrol reported.
According to the reports, TCS has advised affected employees to await further instructions before making any payments. The company has affirmed that employees who received these notices would soon receive rectification intimations, indicating that they are not required to pay the demanded amounts at this time.
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TCS has inferred that errors may have occurred while processing submitted returns, and the assessing officer has the authority to amend these notices.
The company reassured employees that the tax authorities would reprocess the returns, aligning the TDS with Form 26AS and Form 16A, which detail TDS amounts deducted from income and tax payments, respectively.
Employees are encouraged to consult with tax advisors or contact TCS for more information regarding their situations, as clarified in a subsequent email from the company.
Experts suggest that the tax department may rectify the issues autonomously, potentially nullifying the demand notices without requiring action from the employees.
Furthermore, experts advised that if the discrepancies are not resolved, employees may file for reprocessing of their returns through the income-tax filing portal after a month.
Automated notices regarding TDS mismatches often occur when there are inconsistencies between the TDS amounts claimed and those recorded in the Annual Information Statement (AIS)/Form 26AS. If the errors originate from the Central Processing Centre, which oversees primary assessments, the notices may be nullified.