KNOW ALL ABOUT THE NEW FACELESS TAX ASSESSMENT

Pritika Khanna Aug 17, 2020

Prime Minister, Narendra Modi on August 13 launched a new tax scheme in order to honour and encourage honest taxpayers. The platform for 'Transparent Taxation Honouring the Honest’ will offer big reforms such as taxpayer charters, faceless assessment and faceless appeal. Prime Minister Modi said that this will strengthen the efforts of "reforming and simplifying our tax system”.

Prime Minister Modi also said, “Faceless assessment and taxpayers charter come in force from today, whereas faceless appeal service will be available from September 25.” He also said “faceless teams across India”will be examining IT returns and will amend grievances.

‘Taxpayer Charter’ will be adopted by the Income Tax Department which will silhouette the rights and responsibilities of both the taxpayers and the tax officers.

After the briefing about the new scheme. The next phase of direct tax reform was also revealed by the Prime Minister. The Direct Tax Reforms aimed at facilitating compliance and rewards to the honest tax payers as the government hopes to revamp from the pandemic hit economy.

Anurag Singh Thakur, Minister State (MoS), Finance went onto Twitter and simplified the ‘Faceless Assessment & Faceless Appeal’ through photographs and with a hashtage #HonoringTheHonest.

Faceless Assessment

The Faceless Assessment is being turned out to evacuate the human interface between the citizen and the Income Tax (I-T) Department. Nirmala Sitharaman, Finance Minister said that the faceless tax scrutiny assessment and appeal would help in facilitating consistence burden of the taxpayers as well as increment decency and objectivity in the tax system. She also added, “It eases compliance burden, it brings in a fair objective and a just system, there shall not be any physical interface between the department and the taxpayer and to an extent, it shall bring in the certainty of information.”

The things to know about the Faceless Assessment Scheme are as follows:

Features

Abolition of territorial Jurisdiction

Automated random allocation of cases

Central insurance of notice with Document Identification No.

No physical interface, no need to visit the income tax office

Team-based assessments and team-based review

Draft assessment order in one city, review in another city and finalisation in third city.

Exceptions

Case relating to:

Serious frauds, major tax evasion, sensitive & search matters

International tax

Black Money Act and Benami Property

Deduction and Collection

Prime Minister Narendra Modi said, ''Earlier, our focus has been on banking the unbanked, securing the unsecured, funding the unfunded. Today, we are launching Honouring the Honest.’’

TDS on cash withdrawal above ₹1 crore (20 lakh for Non-filers)

TCS on Foreign remittance under LRS above ₹7.5 lakh/overseas tour packages.

TDS on e-commerce suppliers and TCs on purchase of goods above ₹50 lakh.