E-Filing - Assessees Beware - Technical Delay Will Not Be Tolerated
BETTER start filing the return from tomorrow itself; you don't know when you will be successful. The DG, Systems categorically states:
It is the legal responsibility of the assessees, who are required to file returns, to file it within the due date as prescribed under law. It may, however, be noted that merely uploading the returns will not be considered as returns having been filed with the department. A return will be considered as filed, when the same is successfully accepted by the application as “Filed” and the relevant date for determining the date of filing of return will be the date of uploading of such successfully “filed” returns. In case a return is “rejected” by the application, the date of uploading of the rejected return will not be considered as the date of filing, rather the date of uploading of the successfully “filed”, return (after the assessee carries out necessary corrections and uploads it again) will be considered as the actual date of filing.
In case the assessee experiences any difficulty in transacting in ACES such as filing of return, the assessees may lodge a complaint with the ACES Service Desk or the department by e-mail and/or by telephone and obtain a ticket no as an acknowledgement from the department. However, mere lodging of complaints with the ACES service desk will not be a valid ground to justify late filing of returns. If the difficulty is not on account of problems at the assessee's end, and can be clearly attributed to the department's IT infrastructure such as problems in accessing Central Board of Excise and Customs ACES application due to server, network or application being down, proportionate time will be deducted from the date of uploading of successfully “filed” returns to ascertain the actual date and time of filing of the return. Since the department maintains logs of such technical failures, in case of any dispute, the decision of the department will be final.
What is the validity of unsigned returns? Obviously, the electronic returns are not signed. What then is their legal validity? DG, Systems clarifies:
The ACES application is designed to accept digitally signed documents. However, in the beginning this functionality is not going to be activated. Pending its activation, the electronic returns will be filed into ACES without digital signatures. Hence, wherever the returns are submitted through ACES there will not be any requirement to submit signed hard copy separately .
Annexure to CBEC Circular No. 956/17/2011-CX, Dated : September 28, 2011