Faceless tax assessment: 60% of allocated cases settled in a year, says CBDT’s Mody

“Where there was a case to raise tax demand, it was done and where there was no need to raise demand, no tax claim was made,” Mody said.

After the faceless assessment scheme was rolled out about a year ago, the Income Tax department has settled about 1.15 lakh assessment orders or 58% of the cases allocated for such resolution, Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) chairman PC Mody said.

According to him, after the scheme was launched in August 2020, 57,985 legacy cases and 1,36,001 new cases were allocated in faceless assessment scheme. Out of these, 46,822 legacy cases and 59,552 new cases have been disposed of.

“Where there was a case to raise tax demand, it was done and where there was no need to raise demand, no tax claim was made,” Mody said.

In these cases, additional tax demands were there only in around 8% of the cases, (against 60% during the earlier system) that involved personal interface and resultant element of subjectivity, Mody said. The amount involved in tax disputes were over `11 lakh crore in FY19 end, as per official data, up 23% over the year-ago level; the Centre’s gross tax receipts in FY19 was Rs 20.8 lakh crore.

Out of the total 4,12,046 cases assigned to National Faceless Assessment Centre (NFAC) after the faceless appeal scheme was launched in September 2020, notices were issued in 3,64,389 cases and final orders were issued in 14,743 cases.

Faceless assessments have been initiated for the purposes of making assessment of total income or loss of the assessee under section 143(3) or 144 of the Income Tax Act, 1961. The idea is to impart greater efficiency, transparency and accountability by eliminating the interface between the Assessing Officer and the assesses in the course of proceedings to the extent technologically feasible. The system is seen to allow optimum utilisation of the resources through economies of scale and functional specialisation. It is team-based assessment with dynamic jurisdiction.