The Central Board of Direct Taxes expanded its SAKSHAM NUDGE initiative to nearly 12,000 tax professionals, urging them to advise clients to file updated income tax returns before the October 21 deadline. SAKSHAM, originally an outreach campaign targeting individual taxpayers, now enlists chartered accountants and tax practitioners as compliance intermediaries. The initiative uses behavioural nudge techniques to encourage voluntary disclosure and filing without enforcement action, reducing litigation and boosting tax collection through peer-channel outreach.

SAKSHAM NUDGE is a CBDT behavioural compliance initiative that uses 'nudge theory' — drawing from behavioural economics — to prompt voluntary tax compliance rather than relying on coercive enforcement. Instead of issuing notices or penalties, CBDT sends targeted communications that highlight the benefits of voluntary disclosure and the risks of non-compliance, leveraging psychological triggers such as social norms and loss aversion.

The expansion to tax professionals is strategically significant. Chartered accountants, tax agents, and practitioners collectively influence thousands of individual and corporate clients. By converting them into compliance ambassadors, CBDT multiplies its outreach without expanding its enforcement machinery.

The October 21 deadline referenced here is for filing Updated Income Tax Returns (ITR-U) under Section 139(8A) of the Income Tax Act. ITR-U allows taxpayers to correct omissions or errors in originally filed returns within two years of the relevant assessment year, subject to payment of additional tax. CBDT uses data analytics to identify taxpayers with apparent mismatches between reported income and third-party data (TDS, SFT, AIS), then routes nudge communications through their tax professionals.

For SEBI aspirants, the conceptual link is to investor taxation — ITR-U is directly relevant to taxpayers with unreported capital gains, dividend income, or securities transaction data that CBDT detects through the Annual Information Statement (AIS). The CBDT–SEBI data-sharing ecosystem sits behind this initiative.