How You can Rectify a Mistake Made While Paying Your Income Tax

Sometimes, errors occur even though we take the utmost care to avoid making them. A mistake made while making an income tax payment can cause a lot of stress to a taxpayer, more so when the amounts involved are huge. Do not worry! Here are a couple of ways you can rectify the mistake you have made while making your Income Tax payment.

First let us understand in brief how tax payments are made. There are two modes of payment – online and offline. Online payment is made on the Tax Information Network (TIN-NSDL) website, and offline payments are made through banks. Presently, only a system to correct physical challans (payments made through banks) has been put in place, where such challans can be corrected by visiting the concerned branch of the bank, where payment has been made.

Some of the common errors taxpayers make while paying their taxes are – quoting the wrong assessment year, filling in an incorrect amount of tax, or getting one of the major or minor head codes wrong. These are the following heads of the challan which can be corrected-

• Assessment Year
• Major Head Code
• Minor Head Code
• TAN/PAN
• Total Amount
• Nature of Payment (i.e TDS Codes)

However, there is a specified time window for correcting challans and only within this period, can challans be rectified by the bank. The time limit allowed is 7 days from the date of deposit of the challan for correcting heads such as the assessment year, total amount and the TAN/PAN. Any other field such as major head, minor head or nature of payment has up to 3 months time, within which a taxpayer can choose to rectify his mistake. Similarly, even the bank has a time window of 7 days, calculated from the date of receipt of the correction request, within which they must make the correction.

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The changes in the challan can be made by the banks, subject to the following conditions:

1. A correction in the ‘Name’ field will not be permitted.
2. A combination of correcting the minor head and assessment year together is not allowed.
3. A PAN/TAN correction is allowed provided the name in the challan matches with the new PAN/TAN.
4. A change of amount will be allowed provided that the new amount matches with the amount actually received by the bank and credited to the government account.
5. Correction is allowed to be done only once on a single challan, unless the first correction request has been made for a change of amount. Only in such cases will a second correction be allowed.
6. There will be no partial acceptance of a correction request i.e. either all the changes requested will be allowed if they pass the validation test, or no change will be allowed if even one change that is requested fails the validation test.

The procedure is very simple-

1. The taxpayer needs to submit a request for correction to the concerned bank branch. This request form should be made in duplicate.
2. The original challan counterfoil must be attached.
3. A copy of the PAN card should also be attached in case correction is to be made for challans in Form 280, 282 and 283.
4. If a payment is by a taxpayer other than an individual, and correction is required in such cases, then the original authorization with seal of the non-individual taxpayer is required to be attached with the request form.
5. For every challan that requires correction, a separate request form needs to be submitted.

In case of online payments made, or in cases where the window of 7 days to correct challans paid through a bank has passed, or if any other heads need to be changed, other than those mentioned above, then the taxpayer can still make a request for correction by visiting the office of his assessing officer. To find out the address of the assessing officer, click on the ‘Know your TAN/AO’ option on the left side of the official tax filing website i.e. http://www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/home. After validating the PAN and mobile number, the address of the assessing officer will be displayed. It is up to the assessing officer to allow the correction to be made, provided the case is bonafide.

With the above measures in place, taxpayers need not worry about rectifying genuine mistakes that may have occurred while making their tax payments.

For any clarifications/feedback on the topic, please contact the writer at

athena.rebello@cleartax.in

Athena Rebello

I’m a Chartered Accountant by profession and a writer by passion. ClearTax lets me be both. I love travel, hot tubs, and coffee. I believe that life is short, so I always eat dessert first. Wait.. life is also too short to be reading bios… Go read my articles!