Faceless e-assessment scheme launched

In a move to facilitate eassessment on taxation, the government has selected over 58,000 income tax cases under the National eAssessment Center (NeAC), aiming at a complete faceless e-assessment scheme to eliminate interface between an assessing officer and a taxpayer, according to a top official of Finance Ministry.

“To begin with, 58,322 income tax cases have been selected under the NeAC, a major initiative in the direction of taxation reform. It would be a faceless e-assessment scheme to eliminate interface between an assessing officer and a taxpayer,” said Revenue Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey, while launching NeAC on here.

A total of 2,686 officials of the I-T department, he said, have been deputed for implementation of the scheme. “Anyone whose case is selected for scrutiny will be able to file all the documents online. Now the officer who is going to assess the case will also be selected randomly,” he said.

“The number of cases that are selected for scrutiny is based on certain criteria, including cases where there are serious discrepancies,” he added.

The scheme was to be launched by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, but due to her official exigencies, including meetings with the Prime Minister, she could not formally launch the initiative.

However Pandey further said that the initiative, aimed at improving taxpayer’s ease and convenience, has been achieved in record time. However, the revenue department also said the scheme would bring in a paradigm shift in taxation by eliminating human interface in the income tax assessment system. “This will improve taxpayer’s ease and convenience,” it said.

In July Budget speech, Sitharaman had announced the faceless assessment scheme. “The existing system of scrutiny assessments in the Income-tax Department involves a high level of personal interaction between the taxpayer and the Department, which leads to certain undesirable practices on the part of tax officials,” she had noted.