 "In pics: All about faceless income tax assessment starting from today")
Last month, Prime Minister Narendra Modi introduced Faceless Assessment, Faceless Appeal and Taxpayers Charter in his video conference on 'Transparent Taxation - Honouring the Honest'. While Faceless Assessment and Taxpayers Charter came in force from August 13, income-tax appeals are all set to go faceless from today, September 25.
Until this day, all tax-related matters in a city were dealt with by the city’s Income Tax department. However, under the Faceless Appeals system, there will be a random allocation of the IT officer across the country and the identity of the officer deciding the appeal will remain unknown. This also means that the taxpayer will not be required to visit the income tax office or the officer. Further, decisions will be team-based.
Faceless Appeals system aims at achieving faster clearance, a reduced interface between taxpayers and officers, and enhanced ease of doing business. Under the new regime, all cases other than those assigned to the central charges (serious frauds, major tax evasion, sensitive and search matters, black money and benami cases) and international tax charges are to be done through faceless assessment.
India introduced a faceless assessment of tax on a pilot basis in October 2019, taking up about 58,000 cases. Of these cases, orders were passed in 11,000 cases and about 4,000-5,000 orders will be issued soon. It was understood that faceless assessments will require a structural change for tax authorities as well as significant infrastructure support.
Though all appeals till the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) level will go faceless, personal hearing might be allowed via video-conferencing in some cases after approvals from designated senior officers. CIT (Appeals) is the first level of appeal against a demand raised by the assessing officer. Appeals against orders at the CIT level can be filed at the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) and later in high courts and the Supreme Court.