Salient Features of Income Tax faceless Assessment from ezybizindia's blog

Income Tax Return in India

Recently, the Central Board of Direct Taxes, India as part of policy decision making of government of India, to make Income Tax Assessmentin India transparent, fair and for reducing the human interface between the tax payer and the tax department, has introduced the Income Tax Faceless Assessment Scheme and made necessary changes in the Income Tax Act in this regard.

Salient features of the Income Tax Faceless Assessment

Some of the salient features of the Income Tax Faceless Assessmentin India are as under:

a)      A central nodal agency in the form of National Faceless Assessment Centre (NFAC) has been introduced for the smooth conducting of faceless Income Tax assessmentwhich will be the central coordinating agency between the tax payers as well as the tax officers. It will be the single point of contact between the tax payers and the Income Tax Department.

b)    Now, the notice shall be issued by the NFAC to the assessee and any reply filed by the assessee to the NFAC will be forwarded to respective tax officers at the regional assessment centers (RAC) through automatic computerized system. Any further queries received from the RAC will be forwarded to the respective tax payers by the NFAC and so on

c)     At no point of the entire assessment proceedings, the assessee would have to interact with the assessing officer on manual or physical manner.

d)    There are total 8 RAC and in each RAC there are different units for assisting in the smooth conduct of the assessment like assessment unit, technical unit, verification unit and review unit. There would be random allocation of cases to particular assessment unit through random selection automatically by the computer system.

e)     The idea behind Faceless Income Tax Assessment is to remove the human interventions, bring more transparency, accountability in the assessment process by making use of latest technology, machine learning and artificial intelligence, adopting the best global practices and to reduce the harassment of tax payers as well as to reduce the corruption and bring more efficiency in the entire Income tax Assessment procedures.

f)      It also helps in saving the considerable time of taxpayers and that of administration in the paperwork and other legal compliances

g)     It helps in abolition of territorial jurisdiction since tax return of assessee of one city would be scrutinized by the tax officer sitting in another city

h)    There will be team based assessment and team based review which will increase the authenticity of the entire assessment.

i)       After completion of the assessment, all the relevant files are transferred to the jurisdictional assessing officer for conducting post assessment work.

j)       Any appeal against the faceless assessment order must also be filed electronically i.e. through faceless appeal scheme recently introduced by the CBDT.

k)    In case assessee requires personal hearing, same shall be provided through video conferencing only.

l)       Presently, international taxation cases, Transfer Pricing cases and search and seizure cases are excluded from Income Tax Faceless Assessmentand same would continue to be done in manual or physical manner.