With a reconciliation, not an argument. What the department holds is consideration — the gross value on which the exchange deducted 1% under s.194S and reported it in its quarterly statement — while Schedule VDA reports gain, so the two figures are meant to differ and the reply has to show why. The department is matching returns against the TDS statements filed by virtual asset service providers, and where the reply is a bare assertion that the figure is turnover, at least one High Court has held that the officer was entitled to be unsatisfied.
Start with what the department actually receives. On an Indian exchange, the exchange deducts 1% under s.194S and reports the trade — the buyer-side machinery is Form 26QE and Form 16E under Notification 67/2022, and the exchange's own quarterly statement is Form 26QF under Notification 73/2022, which also requires it to report amounts paid or credited on which no tax was deducted. That reporting lands in the Annual Information Statement and Form 26AS. The AIS information list published by the Directorate of Income-tax (Systems) carries a category for receipts on transfer of virtual digital assets, and its version 3.0.0 changes added an information code for receipt of consideration for VDA in kind or from a specified person.
Then the campaign. In June 2025 the Board ran a NUDGE exercise on virtual digital assets. In a written reply reported by practitioner sources, the position stated was that 'Data analytics tools, project insight, and internal databases are used to match information on VDA transactions with disclosures in ITRs. The TDS returns filed by virtual asset service providers (VASPs) and taxpayers' ITRs are also analyzed to identify discrepancies and take appropriate action.' The reported outcome was 44,507 communications and Rs 888.82 crore of undisclosed virtual digital asset income identified, with the communications directed at assessment year 2024-25. Press reporting also describes the department verifying returns against 'TDS returns filed by the Virtual Asset Service Providers' and flagging persons who did not file Schedule VDA at all.
Now the arithmetic that produces most of the mismatches. Section 194S deducts on consideration, not on gain, at each disposal. A trader who buys and sells the same Rs 5 lakh twenty times has Rs 1 crore of reported consideration and perhaps Rs 40,000 of gain. A crypto-to-crypto swap is a disposal of the coin given up, so it appears as consideration even though no rupees moved. Movements between your own wallets or between two exchanges are not transfers within s.2(47) at all, but some exchanges deduct on them anyway, and the deduction then appears in the AIS as a receipt. A trade routed through a broker can produce deduction at two legs. None of this is an error in the return; all of it needs explaining on paper.
The reply, therefore, is a table and not a submission. Date, asset, quantity, gross consideration, cost of acquisition, gain, TDS, exchange — tied line by line to the exchange's own downloadable trade ledger and TDS report, with a summary that reconciles the AIS total to the Schedule VDA total and identifies each reconciling item by category. Where an AIS entry is a self-transfer or a duplicate, use the AIS feedback facility on it as well as answering it in the reply, so the entry is contested in the system and not only in correspondence.
That is not a counsel of perfection. In Parmesh Chand Yadav v. ITO the assessee answered a s.148A(b) notice founded on Rs 4,65,72,546 of crypto transactions with his return, his computation and his bank statements, and said the figure was volume. The Rajasthan High Court declined to interfere with the s.148 notice, treating the crypto currency ledger as the document that could have verified the assertion and its absence as the reason the officer's brief order was sufficient. The lesson is practical: at the s.148A stage the reconciliation has to be produced, not promised.
The notices come in several shapes and the right response differs. A s.143(1)(a) proposed adjustment on TDS credit claimed without matching income is answered on the portal within the time given. A defective return notice under s.139(9) usually means VDA income was filed in a form that cannot carry it — ITR-1 or ITR-4 — or Schedule VDA was left blank. A s.133(6) or e-verification query asks for the trade record. A s.148A(b) notice asks you to show why income has not escaped assessment, and is where Parmesh Chand Yadav bites.
If the reconciliation shows that income was in fact under-reported, correct it before the department does. A revised return under s.139(5) is available until 31 December of the assessment year; after that an updated return under s.139(8A) with the additional tax. An updated return is not available once a search or survey has begun, and the block assessment regime in Chapter XIV-B now expressly reaches virtual digital assets, so the window closes when enforcement starts, not when the notice arrives.
The single largest cause of crypto notices is not evasion, it is that the department's figure is gross consideration and the return's figure is gain. If the practitioner treats the notice as an accusation and answers with assertions, the file moves to reassessment; if it is treated as a reconciliation exercise and answered with the exchange ledger, most of it closes at the enquiry stage. It also changes what you ask the client for on day one: the exchange's full-year trade and TDS reports, not the bank statement.
My return was only processed under 143(1). Does that stop the department reopening it later?
Our amalgamation was sanctioned long after the deadline for a revised return. Must the department accept revised returns filed to give effect to the scheme?
My return was only processed under section 143(1) and now the officer wants to reopen it. Can I say he is changing his opinion?
You want to make a claim you missed, but the time to revise the return has gone. Can you just write to the officer?
The High Court quashed my s.148 notice because the ward officer issued it instead of the faceless unit. Does that judgment still stand?
A declaration was required by the due date and you filed it late. Is that fatal?
The High Court threw out my writ petition against a section 148 notice saying I had an alternative remedy. Was it right to refuse to hear me at all?
What happened to the thousands of s.148 notices issued under the old rules after the law changed in 2021?
Every page in this library links to what it was written from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.