The Income Tax Department has claimed that over 80 per cent of legacy cases and over 43 per cent of new cases have been resolved under the Faceless Assessment Scheme.

“Right from obtaining your PAN to solving dispute and settlements, everything is electronic end-to-end. One does not have to move out of his home or office, and can respond and get everything at his/her doorstep,” Pramod Chandra Mody, Chairman, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) told BusinessLine .

bl08Facelessjpg
 

Fewer scrutiny cases

Faceless assessment is a jurisdiction-free assessment where the taxpayer will not know who is assessing his tax return.

Faceless appeal refers to a mechanism where an appeal against an action of the Tax Department can be filed and disposed of online.

Faceless penalty means the penalty proceedings conducted electronically under the ‘e-proceeding’ facility through the assessee’s registered account in designated portal. Mody said the department has tried to assess all the possible pain points in the system and weave them into the faceless scheme.

“We had to maintain fairness and be conscious of the nature of disputes,” he said. In more than 94 per cent of the cases settled through the scheme, the explanation of the taxpayer was accepted and no additional tax or penalty was imposed. Only in about 1,600 cases, concealment or understatement of income was established and addition of income was made.

The tax department expects the number of cases that would come under scrutiny to come down further as more information is being provided in form 26AS and, accordingly, tax return forms are pre-filled. “When I am making information available to taxpayers upfront, chances of mismatch of information and of the return being picked up for scrutiny are lesser” Mody said.

comment COMMENT NOW