You’ve just paid your advance tax or self-assessment tax, and closed the browser tab without saving the receipt. Now your CA is asking for the challan copy, or you need the CIN (Challan Identification Number) to fill into your ITR, and you’re not sure where it went.
The good news: it isn’t lost. Every challan generated through the e-Pay Tax service stays on the e-filing portal, and there’s a separate route if your payment is old enough to predate the current system. Here’s where to look depending on your situation.
Downloading a challan you paid recently (through e-Pay Tax)
Log in to the e-filing portal at incometax.gov.in using your PAN. Go to e-File >> e-Pay Tax. Before the payment list loads, you’ll be asked to select the relevant Income Tax Act, either the Income Tax Act, 1961 or the Income Tax Act, 2025, depending on which period your payment falls under. Pick the one that matches your payment, then open the Payment History tab. Every challan you’ve paid under that selection shows up here with a status of “Paid.”
Click on the relevant entry to download the Challan Receipt. It carries the CIN, the BSR code of the collecting bank branch, and the date of payment, everything you need to claim the payment as tax credit in your return.
There’s no cutoff on how long a paid challan stays visible under Payment History. That said, download it right after payment and keep a copy. If your bank or the portal has any reconciliation delay later, you don’t want to be searching for it under pressure.
Forgot to download it right after paying?
This happens more often than you’d think, especially close to an advance tax or self-assessment tax deadline. Log back into your account on the e-filing portal, select the correct Income Tax Act, and the Challan Receipt is still sitting there under Payment History. Nothing expires it.
Lost the physical counterfoil from an over-the-counter payment at a bank branch? Same answer: the digital Challan Receipt is always available for download once you log in, so the paper copy was never your only record.