A Section 143(2) notice under the Income-tax Act, 1961 is the formal statutory intimation served by the Assessing Officer (or more commonly today, by the National Faceless Assessment Centre (NaFAC) under Section 144B) that a return filed by the taxpayer has been selected for scrutiny assessment. Unlike the automated Section 143(1) summary processing — which is essentially a CPC-driven arithmetical verification — a Section 143(2) scrutiny is a deep, merit-based examination of the return under Section 143(3) of the Act, potentially spanning every income head, every deduction, every disclosure, and every supporting document in the taxpayer's books. A scrutiny notice is therefore one of the most consequential communications a taxpayer can receive from the tax department — it marks the beginning of a 12-month assessment cycle (under Section 153) that can culminate in a Section 143(3) order with additions to income, interest, Section 270A mis-reporting penalty, and demand under Section 156 — and, in adverse cases, Section 270A penalty notices at 50% (under-reporting) or 200% (mis-reporting) of the tax on the additions.

The power to issue a Section 143(2) notice is circumscribed by statute. Under the proviso to Section 143(2), the notice must be served on the assessee within 3 months from the end of the financial year in which the return is filed — this is a strict time limit, and a notice served beyond this window is void and confers no jurisdiction to assess. Selection for scrutiny happens through multiple channels — Computer Assisted Scrutiny Selection (CASS) based on risk parameters and data-matching against Form 26AS / AIS / TIS / SFT under Section 285BA, Limited Scrutiny cases confined to specified issues, Complete Scrutiny covering the whole return, Compulsory / Manual Scrutiny (for search, survey, reopened cases, exemption-denied trusts, and other specified categories), and Transfer Pricing references to the TPO under Section 92CA extending the assessment time limit. Whatever the category, the procedure that follows is substantially the same — a detailed Section 142(1) questionnaire, responses uploaded via the e-filing portal's e-Proceedings module, video-conference hearings where permitted (typically when material adverse variation is proposed), and a Section 143(3) final order after a Section 144B show-cause on the draft order.

Our Section 143(2) Notice Response Services cover the full scrutiny defence cycle — from decoding the notice and identifying whether it is Limited, Complete, or Compulsory scrutiny (each has a different defence playbook), testing service-date validity against the Section 143(2) proviso time limit (often a game-changing jurisdictional defence), building a point-wise reconciliation of the ITR with Form 26AS / AIS / TIS / Form 16 / 16A / books / GST data, drafting technical and legal responses to each item in the Section 142(1) questionnaire, compiling contemporaneous documentary evidence and case-law support, filing through the faceless e-Proceedings module within every deadline, requesting and attending video-conference hearings where material variations are proposed, responding to Section 144B show-cause notices on draft orders, defending penalty proceedings under Sections 270A and 271(1)(b), filing first appeals before CIT(A) under Section 246A and second appeals before ITAT under Section 253 where adverse orders are passed, securing stay of demand under Section 220(6) (20% pre-deposit norm) and Section 254(2A), and taking the matter to the jurisdictional High Court under Section 260A and the Supreme Court under Section 261 where needed — so the taxpayer walks through scrutiny with minimum additions, minimum interest, minimum penalty, and a clean record for future years.