Registering as Legal Heir in Case of the Death of Taxpayer

There are certain queries coming from various Taxpayers on how to deal Tax liabilities and compliances after demise and what are legal requirements concerning Income Tax Liability and Compliances in case the death of the taxpayer. In such cases, family member of the deceased is to be nominated as designated legal heir to deal with the tax obligations of the deceased. Section 159 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 has perfect the answer to this question. According to that, “if a person dies, then his legal representatives shall be liable to pay any sum which the deceased would have been liable to pay if he had not died, in a similar manner and to the same extent as the deceased.” The legal representative needs to satisfy certain measures to get the Legal Heir Certificate and for Registering as Legal Heir in Case of The Death of Taxpayer. These documents are considered as valid in this case:

Process of Registering as Legal Heir in Case of the Death of Taxpayer

Documents required for Legal Heir Registration:

One of successor, normally spouse, son or daughter or the deceased have to register as a legal heir in case of the death of taxpayer and they need following documents to submit to get the registration

• Legal Heir Certificate issued by a court.
• Legal Heir Certificate issued by local revenue authorities.
• Surviving family member certificate issued by local revenue authorities.
• The registered WILL that satisfies as a legal representation.
• The family pension certificate, issued by State/Central Govt.

Personal identification of the deceased and the Legal Heir

The next step is to get all the personal identification documents and all required affidavit for filing the Income Tax return on behalf of the deceased person. Majorly, all the following documents are required for this step

• Death Certificate of the deceased person
• A copy of the PAN Card of deceased
• A self-attested copy of the PAN Card of the legal heir
• Original Legal Heir Certificate
• Notarized affidavit.

Digital Signature Certification:

The next step requires the Legal Heir to avail the Digital signature Certificate (DSC). For this, he or she may visit the official website of Income Tax Department and follow these simple steps: (please note that getting digital signature is optional for assessee unless they are falling in class where digital signature is mandatory for filing the return of income tax)

• Download “ITD e-Filing DSC Management Utility” from the link provided in Income Tax e-Filing website at the time of XML upload.
• Extract the zip folder and open the utility (DSC_MGMT_UTILITY.jar).
• The utility will be opened as below. Select Register/Reset Password Using DSC tab.

One can even check the Help section of the official IT e-filling website and thereby check for the subsection there named DSC Management Utility for a better understanding of this thing.

Online e-Filling of IT Return for the deceased person

Lastly, on the fifth step, the Legal Heir can begin the online processing to file the Tax Return for the deceased one by logging into the Income Tax Department’s official e-Filling website. He/She needs to follow these steps for doing that:

• Go to my account and register as a legal heir first.
• Provide all the necessary details and upload all the above-mentioned documents and then click to ‘submit’ tab for requesting the permission of e-Filling Administrator for further processing.
• The e-Filing Administrator will then scrutinize all the details based on the submitted documents. This may take some time. After proper evaluation, the Administrator will send the approval or disapproval.
• Email Notification for this will be sent to the registered email id of the legal heir.
• Based on documents submitted IT Department will allow the Legal heir to file the IT return into two categories.
• One, who is considered as a temporary legal heir due to his/her failure to submit the legal heir certificate mentioned above, can access the e-filling system and upload the ITR/Forms, but won’t be able to access all other services like add CA to submit audit forms on behalf of the deceased.
• The permanent legal heir (the one who submitted the valid legal heir documents) can file ITR/Forms or view status. He can use the portal exactly like an individual taxpayer. He can view Status of Income Tax Return/Forms, ITR-V Acknowledgment and other filing status of e-Filed, Returns/Forms in respect of the deceased or can also view the status of the request under My Request List menu, post Login.
• Once, after approval of the application by e-Filing Administrator, the legal heir can file IT return on behalf of deceased using legal heir login.
• The legal heir should add his PAN Card in the verification portion of Income Tax form, validate it, and thereby generate the XML sheet of the return.

Finally, By this detailed process one can be the successor of a taxpayer after his/her death and by acting as the Legal Heir to him/her, can conclude all the left out tax related processing through online e-Filling for the deceased individual without any kind of external troubles

Related Read- How to file return in case of deceased asseesee