Income Tax Dept cautions taxpayers against sharing user ID, password

The Income Tax Department has warned taxpayers against sharing their user ID and password with any unauthorised person, saying they too will be liable to face consequences for misuse of their confidential information.

In an advisory to taxpayers, the department’s TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) Centralised Processing Cell (CPC) told assessees that their “user ID and password are the most sensitive information, misuse of which can lead to tampering of confidential TDS-related information, your own sensitive data and deductee-related confidential information”.

It further said that “if a password is hacked or stolen, it can result in information security breach, leading to undesirable consequences, including privacy violations”.

It asked taxpayers to exercise caution in use of log-in credentials at TRACES, which should not be disclosed to any unintended or unauthorised individual. “If shared, the person using login credentials shall also be liable to consequences,” it added. TDS Reconciliation Analysis and Correction Enabling System (TRACES) helps easy filing of tax deducted at source (TDS) or tax collected at source (TCS) correction statements by deductors/collectors and related functionalities.

The taxman asked users to secure their password with at least eight characters in length and a combination of lower case, upper case, numeric and special characters.

“Do not write your password on notepads or the whiteboard at your desk,” it cautioned.