The taxpayers have been given a big relief as the government of India has decided to start rolling the faceless and paperless income tax proceedings with the notification of the income tax e-assessment scheme recently.
The finance ministry has informed the e-assessment scheme 2019 for carrying out faceless scrutiny assessment of income tax returns (ITR). The scheme contains the creation of e-assessment centers at national as well as regional levels; auto-allocation of cases amongst these centers.
Furthermore, it specified that all communication with taxpayers as well as amongst assessment centers, etc., shall be completely electronic; communications shall be digitally authenticated, and most significantly assesses are not required making a personal appearance at centers.
This measure is expected to decrease on harassment of taxpayers and progress the image of the department through ensuring that every tax proceedings which includes scrutiny are conducted on a centralized basis without any direct interaction with the assessee.
The faceless IT assessments shall start from next month.
As a part of the scheme, the Central Board of Direct Taxes would establish up national and regional e-Assessment centers along with assessment units to carry out electronic assessments and proceedings which also includes refunds.
The national e-assessment center after finishing the assessment would transfer all the electronic records towards the Assessing Officer for levying penalty or collection and recovery of demand.
The CBDT was working on electronic assessments for over a year now and was progressing out some procedures in stages.
Even the assessment shall be governed by certain pre-determined risk assessment standards and other pre-fixed broad factors. The notification has been issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on 12th September 2019.
Few important things a taxpayer must know regarding the E-assessment Scheme, 2019 are:
As per this scheme, the scrutiny notice shall be issued towards the taxpayers under section 143(2) if the taxpayer has under-reported his income or over-stated losses.
The taxpayer would have to reply within 15 days from the date of receiving of notice. The notice issued shall be sent electronically on the individual’s account on the e-fling website, in the direction of the registered email address of the individual or on the mobile application of the income tax department which contains the registered mobile number.
The taxpayer would be required to respond to the notice or order received by means of the registered account only. The response would be considered effectively submitted once the taxpayer has received the acknowledgment from the National e-assessment Centre.
The taxpayers shall not be required to appear either personally or by any authorized representative concerning the proceedings associated to the scheme before income tax authority, National e-assessment center or Regional e-assessment Centre or any unit formed under the scheme.
All the communication amid the department as well as the individual taxpayer shall be conducted electronically. Even every of the internal communication within the income tax department would be electronic.
The e-assessment scheme is going to be fully automated. As per this scheme, the National e-assessment center could assign the scrutiny case towards any regional e-assessment center by means of an automated allocation system.
In case the regional assessment needs assistance from the verification unit or technical help from technical unit, then such requests would be managed through automated allocation system.
In case the regional assessment unit needs further information or documents from the individual, then such request primary is required to be made to the National e-assessment center.
The regional assessment unit would make a draft assessment order and then it will send it to the National e-assessment Centre.
The National e-assessment Centre would examine the draft received according to the risk management strategy stated by the CBDT.
Conclusion
It was also stated that the concept of e-assessments is an exceptional one in principle, as the scheme would bring more transparency as well as develop the image of the income tax department, however administrative methods and processes are required to be developed to make certain that it doesn’t result in an unjustified injustice towards the taxpayer.
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