Confirming the validity of the communications received from the CBIC

CA. Heet Shah (Tax Consultant & Practitioner)   (6174 Points)

09 December 2019  

The CBIC has clarified that every notice issued by its officer shall stand invalid and assumed never issued unless it carries Document Identification Number (DIN). Therefore no search authorization, summon, arrest memo, inspection notices or letters issued in the course of any inquiry shall be issued by the officer under the board to taxpayer or any person without a computer-generated DIN being duly quoted prominently in the body of such communication.

The genuineness of the DIN generated by the proper officer can verified on the common portal by entering the CBIC DIN on www.cbic.gov.in. The site will vouch for the communication by providing the information of issuing office and date of its generation. The format of the DIN shall be CBIC-YYYY-MM-ZCDR-NNNNNN where:-

  • YYYY-MM denotes year and month in which the DIN is generated.
  • ZCDR denotes Zone commissionerate division code of the user generating the Din.
  • NNNNNN denotes Alphanumeric System generated random no.

However, in exceptional cases communication may be issued without auto-generated DIN after recording the reason in writing and by stating the same in the communication issued. The situations maybe-

  • When there are technical difficulties in generating the DIN.
  • Communication regarding investigation/enquiry and verification etc.is required to be issued at short notice /in urgent situation and authorised officer is outside the office in discharge of his official duty.