Faceless assessment empowers taxpayers: Finance Ministry

“The Faceless Assessment system of Income Tax Department has been a game changer in the arena of direct taxation. It has empowered the taxpayers and has, as a foremost mechanism, altered the facets and perception of overall tax administration in India,” said a highly placed source in the Finance Ministry.

Since its launch on October 7, 2019, and implementation of the first phase, Faceless Assessment has provided for assessment of income-tax in electronic mode, where “now taxpayers need not see face-to-face any tax officer or visit an I-T office and need not run pillar-to-post on receiving income tax scrutiny assessment notice or rush to a tax professional or accountant; and yet, s/he can e-file assessment’s reply on the income tax portal from the comforts of her/his home without the hassle or visiting any tax officer. Yes, time is changing for direct tax administration in India with automated and random allocation of income tax assessment cases without human interface at any stage”, added the same Source.

According to sources, other than the one quoted above, in the first phase of the Faceless Assessment, a total of 58,319 cases were assigned in an automated way randomly and these were kept away from the geographical jurisdiction of the case, based on computer Algorithms.