That Notice Isn't Random. Here's Why India Sent It, and What to Do.

Almost every NRI notice starts in the same place: a mismatch a computer found.

The Income Tax Department runs a data programme called Project Insight, which draws on the same third-party data that fills your Annual Information Statement (the AIS), bank interest, mutual fund and share transactions, property registrations, large remittances, and matches it against the return you filed. When the two do not line up, the system flags it and a notice follows. No human has to pick you out.

The single most common trigger for NRIs is the simplest one: TDS sitting in your Form 26AS, on NRO interest or a property sale, with no return filed against it. The bank deducted the tax and reported it. You never filed. The mismatch is automatic, and so is the notice.

Not all notices carry the same weight. The section printed at the top is the fastest way to know what you are dealing with:

Section 142(1): a routine request. They want information, or want you to file a return. Low stress. Respond with what they ask for.

Section 143(2): scrutiny. They are examining your return in detail. Handle this carefully, and have a CA look at it before you reply.

Section 148 or 148A: reassessment. They believe income escaped tax in a past year and want to reopen it. This is the serious one, and the one you should not answer on your own.

Section 245: a refund set-off. They are adjusting a refund you are owed against an old demand, sometimes one you did not know about. Check it at once.

Section 144: best-judgment assessment. This is what happens if you ignore the rest, they estimate your income themselves, usually high.

These sections are being renumbered under the Income-tax Act 2025, in force from April 2026, but the notice you hold today still uses these numbers.

This changed recently, and a lot of old advice is now wrong. Reopening a past year under Section 148 used to reach back up to ten years. Since 1 September 2024, that window is much shorter:

For most cases, they can go back about three years from the end of the assessment year.

They can reach up to about five years only where the income that escaped tax is 50 lakh or more.

Anything older than that is time-barred and cannot be reopened. So if a notice tries to reach a year outside these limits, that itself is a ground to challenge it, which is exactly the kind of thing a CA checks first.

This is the part that stops many NRIs from acting: the fear of taking leave, booking a flight, and sitting in front of an officer. You do not.

Under Section 288, a Chartered Accountant can act as your authorized representative and deal with the department on your behalf. You sign a simple authorization and they handle the correspondence.

On top of that, assessments and reassessments are now largely faceless. Notices arrive in your portal account, and replies go back the same way, to a central unit rather than a local officer. There is no counter to visit. Between the faceless system and a CA representing you, the whole matter can be handled from wherever you live.

Every notice has a deadline. Most give around 30 days, but a Section 148A show-cause now sets its own reply window (the fixed 7-to-30-day range was removed in September 2024), so read the date on your own notice and do not assume.

Three rules once a notice lands: do not ignore it, do not fire back an emotional reply, and do not try to handle a 148 yourself. A wrong response can turn a fixable mismatch into a real demand.

And fix the thing that traps most NRIs: register your current email and mobile on the income tax portal and switch on alerts. Notices that go to an old Indian address, read by a parent who does not understand them, are how deadlines quietly pass.

A 142(1) asking for a single document, you can often answer yourself. The moment it is a 143(2) scrutiny, a 148 reassessment, or a 245 that adjusts a refund you did not expect, it is worth handing to someone who reads these every week.

A CA who handles NRI notices will read the section and the deadline correctly, check whether the notice is even within the time limit, reply through the faceless portal as your authorized representative, and line up the proof, your 26AS, your DTAA position, your cost records, that turns the notice from a threat into a closed file.