Income Tax Services — Which One Do You Need?
Income tax work splits into four situations that need different things: filing a return, fixing one you have already filed, answering something the department has sent you, and chasing money that has not arrived. This page sorts you into the right one.
- Return filing across salary, business, capital gains, F&O and NRI income
- Revised returns, defective-return replies, rectification and ITR-U
- Notice and scrutiny replies, including faceless proceedings
- Refund reissue, 245 adjustments and 244A interest
- Advance tax and lower deduction certificates
Sort Yourself by Situation, Not by Form Number
Most people arrive at income tax with a problem rather than a form. They know a refund has not landed, or that something arrived from the department, or simply that the return is due. The form number is the last thing to work out, not the first.
So these four services are organised by situation. If the year is finished and nothing has gone wrong, you need filing. If you have filed and the numbers were wrong, you need the correction route — and which of the four correction procedures applies depends on what happened and when. If the department has written to you, the section on the notice decides both your deadline and your reply. If money is owed to you, the question is whether the return is unprocessed, the refund failed, or it was set against an old demand.
Get the situation right and the form follows. Get it wrong and you can spend a filing season answering the wrong question.
Find the Service You Need
Four income tax services plus PAN, grouped by what has already happened.
Filing the Year
Something Went Wrong
Why These Belong Together
The four situations feed each other, and the handover between them is where deadlines get missed.
A notice is often a filing problem
Most 143(1) and 139(9) notices trace back to what was filed. A team that filed the return can answer the notice from the same working papers instead of reconstructing them.
Correction routes are deadline-bound
Revised return, 139(9), rectification and ITR-U each have their own window. Picking the wrong one wastes the window as well as the filing.
Refunds fail quietly
A refund set against an old demand under 245, or failed for bank validation, does not announce itself. It is found by looking, which is a task rather than an event.
CA-led throughout
Returns, replies and planning are prepared by qualified professionals rather than handed to software that cannot read a notice.
Income Tax Questions, Answered Plainly
Self-contained answers on filing, corrections, notices and refunds.
- Usually yes, and which route applies depends on what went wrong and how long ago. A revised return replaces the original within the allowed window. A defective return notice under 139(9) has to be answered on its own terms. A rectification under section 154 corrects an error apparent from the record rather than a change of mind. ITR-U lets you update a return well after the normal window, with additional tax. Those are four different procedures, so the correction page starts by diagnosing which one you are in.
- Most are not. A 143(1) intimation is usually an arithmetic comparison and often needs no more than a check. A 139(9) says the return was defective and must be corrected. A 148 reassessment and a scrutiny notice are more substantive and carry deadlines. The first useful step is identifying which section the notice is issued under, because that determines both the deadline and the reply.
- Commonly one of three things: the return is not yet processed, the refund failed and needs reissue because bank details did not validate, or the refund was adjusted against an earlier demand under section 245. Each has a different fix, and where the delay is the department's, interest under 244A may be due on top.
- Income Tax Return Filing. It covers salary, business, capital gains, F&O and NRI income and compares both tax regimes before filing. Come to the other three pages only if something has already gone wrong, or if you want the year planned rather than reported.
- Both, but they are different jobs. Filing reports a year that has already happened. Planning — advance tax instalments, a lower deduction certificate, timing decisions — changes the outcome while the year is still running. The refund and planning page covers the forward-looking side.
Not sure which one applies to you? Describe what happened.
Tell us what you filed, or what arrived from the department, and we will point you at the right service.