Section 200A

What a section 200A notice is

TDS — Intimation / Default. A TDS statement has been processed and a default computed. It is a medium-severity notice in the tds family under the Income Tax Act 1961.

If you ignore it: Default stands, interest and late fee accrue.

Time to reply: commonly stated as 30 days from the date of the notice — but the date printed on your own notice governs, and it overrides any general figure. Very often a PAN or challan mismatch that corrects with a revised statement rather than a legal argument.

Section 200A — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 200A, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Vodafone Idea Ltd v ACIT (Delhi HC, 2026) High CourtHelps taxpayerValidity unconfirmed
  The Tribunal allowed my appeal, the Assessing Officer has passed the appeal effect order and worked out the refund, but the CPC will not pay because the portal shows an outstanding demand on my PAN and on my group TANs. Is that lawful?
  No. Once an appellate authority (or the Assessing Officer giving effect to its order) finds an amount refundable, that becomes a vested and crystallised right, and the Assessing Officer or the CPC cannot withhold a rupee of it except by an order actually passed under section 245. Where the Revenue could not produce any such order, the Delhi High Court held that refusing the refund because of demands standing against the assessee's PAN and sister TANs was untenable in law, arbitrary, and violative of Articles 14, 19(1)(g) and 300A, and directed payment of Rs 53,09,56,470 with interest under sections 244A and 244A(1A) by a fixed date, with a further 1 per cent per month if the date was missed.
• Rashmikant Kundalia v Union of India High CourtHelps department
  I filed my TDS statement late and have been charged Rs.200 a day under section 234E — is that levy even constitutional when no service is given in return?
  Yes. The Bombay High Court upheld section 234E on 9 February 2015. The levy is not punitive: it is a fixed charge for the extra work the Department must do because the statement came in late, and the deductor gets something in return — his late filing is regularised and he is allowed to file beyond the prescribed time. That is a privilege and a special service, so the charge is a fee and not a tax in disguise. The absence of a power to condone delay and of a right of appeal does not make the section onerous, a right of appeal being a creature of statute. The writ petition was dismissed.

Listed strongest first: Supreme Court, then High Court, then Tribunal, then CBDT. Nothing here has yet been read in full by a chartered accountant — open an entry to see where it came from.