Last month CBDT had issued a circular stating that I-T assessees should furnish UTN when they file their returns from this year, if they have to make claims for TDS credit. It was also notified that National Securities Depository Ltd will provide the UTN number for every TDS transaction in 2007-08 and 2008-09.
Practical difficulties

A CBDT source said the board has approached the Finance Ministry for permission to defer the implementation of the UTN. The move follows the practical difficulties in providing UTN to around nine lakh entities and around three crore individual tax payers.

UTN is a 16-digit number that will be generated every time there is a TDS transaction. It is supposed to facilitate verification of pre-paid taxes like TDS with the data available in the NSDL system. This is important since no document is required to be furnished when the returns are filed.

After the deduction of tax at source, the companies remit the funds to the government at the end of each quarter. This is followed by filing a quarterly report, giving a detailed report of every individual transaction. Therefore, for every quarter, the deductee (employee) will have one UTN. Since a company files four returns in a year, the employee will have a minimum of four UTNs from one source of income. In case, the employee has other sources of income, he will get a different UTN for that.

Of the 9 lakh companies, NSDL has got data for only 500 companies and is yet to get data from other companies. After the depository gets the data, it will upload it on the system and compile it. This will take some time, a senior NSDL official said.
Growing concern

CBDT is already aware of the situation and the authorities are expected to take an appropriate decision, the official added.