Income Tax: How to e-verify your return? 5 Key points to know

Income Tax (I-T) department released a statement recently saying that the taxpayers must e-verify their return as soon as they can. This is because an income tax return (ITR) is not considered valid unless it has been verified.

The tax department’s message pointed out that taxpayers can still e-verify your IT return for AY 2024-25 on the e-filing portal using aadhaar OTP, net banking, pre-validated bank account or pre-validated demat account to ensure a secure and hassle-free process.

Those who are yet to verify their income tax return must make note of following five points.

E-verify your tax return: Key points to know 

I. Different ways to verify:

At the outset, you should remember that taxpayers can e-verify their returns online using any of the following methods:

1. OTP on mobile number registered with Aadhaar, or

2. EVC (electronic verification code) generated through your pre-validated bank account, or

3. EVC generated through your pre-validated demat account, or

4. EVC through ATM (offline method), or

5. Net Banking, or Digital Signature Certificate (DSC).

II. Date of verification

Typically, verification must be done within 30 days. Now since 30 days have elapsed from the time of submission of ITR data, the date of verification will be considered as the date of filing.

Notably, delayed verification has certain consequences as per CBDT notification number 2 of 2024 dated March 3, 2024.

III. Process of verification

To verify the return, you need to log in to incometax.gov.in. You can now click on e-file >> income tax returns >> e-verify returns.

IV. Who else can e-verify on your behalf

The Authorised signatory or representative can e-Verify the return on behalf of the assessee using any of the following methods:

Aadhaar OTP: OTP will be sent to the number registered with Aadhaar.

Net Banking: EVC generated through net banking will be sent to the mobile number and email ID registered with the e-Filing portal.

Bank Account / Demat Account EVC: EVC generated through the pre-validated and EVC-enabled bank account / demat account will be sent to the mobile number and email ID registered with the e-Filing portal.

V. How will you know that e-verification is complete? 

After it is done, a message will be displayed along with a Transaction ID, and an email will be sent to your email ID registered with the e-Filing portal.