Non- migration of PANs due to pending Refund Caging

F.No.DGIT(S)/DIT(S)-3/AST/Refund Caging/81/2015–16

Dat­ed: 13.03.2015

The Prin­ci­pal Chief Com­mis­sion­er of Income-tax /CCsIT(By Name)

Ahmedabad/ Allahabad/ Amrit­sar / Bangalore/ Baroda/ Bhopal/ Bhubanesh­war / Bareil­ly / Chandigarh/ Chennai/ Cochin/ Coimbatore/ Dehradun/ Delhi/ Dur­ga­pur / Guwahati/ Hubli/ Hyderabad/ Indore/ jaipur/ Jalpaiguri/ Jodhpur/ Kanpur/ Kolkatta/ Lucknow/ Ludhiana/ Madurai/ Meerut/ Mumbai/ Nagpur/ Nashik/ Panaji/ Panchkula/ Patna/ Pune/ Raipur / Rajkot/ Ranchi/ Shimla/ Shillong/ Surat/ Thane/ Trichy / Trivandrum/ Udaipur / Vishakha­p­at­nam; and

The Prin­ci­pal Com­mis­sion­er of Income-tax / CsIT / CsIT (CO)(By Name)

Agra/Bikaner /Calicut/ Dhanbad/ Gand­hi­na­gar / Gwalior / Jabalpur / Jaland­har / Kol­ha­pur / Muz­zaf­farpur / Mysore/ Patiala/ Rohtak/ Sam­balpur / Varanasi/ Vijaywada/ Del­hi (CO)/ Mum­bai (CO)/ Chen­nai (CO)/ Ahmed­abad (CO)/ Ban­ga­lore (CO)/ Bhopal (CO)/ Bhubanesh­war (CO)/ Kolkat­ta (CO)/ Cochin (CO)/ Chandi­garh (CO)/ Hyder­abad (CO)/ Jaipur (CO)/ Kan­pur (CO)/ Pat­na (CO)/ Pune (CO)/ Guhawati (CO).

Sub­ject: — Non- migra­tion of PANs due to pend­ing Refund Caging — reg.

Sir/ Madam,

Pri­or to imple­men­ta­tion of cadre restruc­tur­ing in Nov., 2014, a num­ber of AST val­i­da­tions were exe­cut­ed at the time of migra­tion of a PAN which restrict­ed PAN migra­tion, if any of the val­i­da­tion was pend­ing. In these cas­es, the AO had to com­plete the action restrict­ing such migra­tion, to enable PAN migration.

2. It was antic­i­pat­ed that mass PAN migra­tion could take place post-cadre restruc­tur­ing. There­fore, con­se­quent upon cadre restruc­tur­ing, AST val­i­da­tions were relaxed or can­celled in non-crit­i­cal cas­es for smoothen migra­tion of PAN except refund caging pend­ing cas­es which was con­sid­ered as crit­i­cal and the same was also duly approved by the Com­pe­tent Author­i­ty. There­fore, nec­es­sary mod­i­fi­ca­tions were made in the Sys­tem which is now main­tain­ing the details of initiations/workflow revert­ed while PAN trans­fer for the val­i­da­tions relaxed / can­celled and it is vis­i­ble to the des­ti­na­tion AO so that new juris­dic­tion­al AO is able to take nec­es­sary action on the pend­ing cases.

3. The field for­ma­tions were expect­ed to com­plete the pend­ing caging work in respect of PANs lying under their juris­dic­tion before imple­men­ta­tion of cadre restruc­tur­ing so that these could be migrat­ed to their new juris­dic­tion. How­ev­er, this office is receiv­ing ref­er­ences from field for­ma­tions as well as com­plaints are being lodged at helpdesk where­in it has been report­ed that ‘con­se­quent upon cadre restruc­tur­ing, numer­ous PANs have been trans­ferred to new juris­dic­tion except those where refund caging is still pend­ing. It is fur­ther report­ed that it is not pos­si­ble to remove the caging of these PANs due to change of assess­ing offi­cer who had effect­ed caging of the cas­es. On ana­lyz­ing the sta­tis­tics obtained from the sys­tem, it is found that in many cas­es field for­ma­tions had not com­plet­ed refund caging exer­cise. Fur­ther, it is observed that var­i­ous RCCs across the coun­try have marked the juris­dic­tions at AO/Range/Charge lev­el as ‘OLD’ and the PANs lying under them are now orphan and there­fore caging in these cas­es can­not be completed.

4. In view of the issues dis­cussed above, the fol­low­ing instruc­tions are issued:

(i) In case of present­ly active AOs hav­ing pend­ing caging of the cas­es whose juris­dic­tion has been changed:

The AOs are advised to com­plete the caging after due ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the records irre­spec­tive of the new juris­dic­tion after cadre restruc­tur­ing. After com­ple­tion of the caging, the PAN can be migrat­ed to its new jurisdiction.

How­ev­er, in cas­es where a man­u­al refund was already issued or present active AO do not want to com­plete the pend­ing caging process. In such sce­nar­ios, the AO can block the refund for con­cerned AY by fol­low­ing the nav­i­ga­tion path “ITD →AST→OTHERS→Block Refund”. In this regard, the fol­low­ing instruc­tions are to be followed:

(a) Cas­es where caging is pend­ing and refund has been issued man­u­al­ly, in such cas­es, a pop-up mes­sage will be dis­played onto AO’s “Block Refund” screen and his con­fir­ma­tion will be sought. On get­ting con­fir­ma­tion, sys­tem will mark such refund cas­es as blocked for con­cerned A.Y.

 (b) Cas­es where caging is pend­ing and AO ver­i­fies non-exis­tance of any man­u­al refunds which is also ver­i­fied by the sys­tem auto­mat­i­cal­ly, the active AOs can block these refund cas­es with their remarks.

With pend­ing caging, in ‘both the above sce­nar­ios, once the refund gets into blocked sta­tus for that AY., the sys­tem allows its PAN migra­tion. The des­ti­na­tion AO will not be able to unblock the refund cas­es which were blocked by adopt­ing the pro­ce­dure men­tioned in 4(i)(a) above. In sce­nario of 4(i)(b) above, the des­ti­na­tion AO can unblock the refund only after due ver­i­fi­ca­tion and then can com­plete the caging process.

(ii) In case of present­ly ‘OLD’­marked AOs with pend­ing caging at the AO level:

The juris­dic­tion­al CIT(if active) or CIT(CO) can migrate the PAN and in this case, the caging will also migrate to the des­ti­na­tion AO as pend­ing and to be com­plet­ed by the des­ti­na­tion AO after due ver­i­fi­ca­tion of the record.

(iii) In case of present­ly ‘OLD’ marked AOs with pend­ing caging at the Range level:

This sce­nario is under analy­sis and will be tak­en up sep­a­rate­ly on the basis of com­plaints lodged at Help desk.

(iv) In case of present­ly inac­tive AOs hav­ing pend­ing caging of the cases:

The respec­tive RCCs are to iden­ti­fy such inac­tive AOs and should be marked “Y” in “OLD Flag” against them. There­after, the PANs can be migrat­ed with pend­ing refund caging as dis­cussed in 4(ii) & 4(iii) above.

5. The com­plete pro­ce­dure is elab­o­rat­ed in the user man­u­al for the func­tion­al­i­ty which is avail­able on i‑taxnet.

6. This instruc­tion may be brought to the knowl­edge of all field offi­cers work­ing in your charge for nec­es­sary action.

7. For any sys­tem relat­ed issue, the offi­cers may lodge a com­plaint at the Helpdesk for speedy resolution.

8. This issues with the pri­or approval of Pro DGIT(S).

Yours faith­ful­ly,

(Ashish Abrol)

Addl. DIT(S)-3, New Delhi