Chennai: ‘The Income Tax department is moving towards faceless scrutiny assessment. This is a novel scheme, which is good for the taxpayers and the department. There will be no harassment, this will reduce litigation and interface. This is a very good scheme and I urge all taxpayers to come forward and make compliance under the new scheme which is beneficial to all,’ said M. L Karmakar, Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-Tax, Tamilnadu and Puducherry.
He said this while addressing a virtual press conference organised by the Press Information Bureau, Chennai, on Faceless Assessment started by Income Tax Department. Jahanzeb Akhter, IRS, Principal Commissioner of Income-Tax, ReAC also explained about the scheme and answered to queries from journalists, while Gurubabu Balaraman, Director, PIB, Chennai, moderated the event.
Karmakar said the scheme was devised for greater transparency, greater efficiency and accountability. ‘This scheme will eliminate interface between taxpayer and tax officers. Taxpayers need not come to Income Tax office personally. Sitting at home, they can file submission and tax officials will analyse it with a randomised system using data analytics and artificial intelligence’.
He further said that a lot of things would depend on the discretion of assessing officer in manual assessment. ‘We have completely revamped it. Instead of territorial jurisdiction, we have brought in dynamic jurisdiction,’ he said.
‘There will be objective, free, fair and just assessment,’ he said and added that at least 5,000 assessments will be done per week under the new system and by the end of October, 58,000 assessments will be done. He said that the new form of assessment process would also bring down litigation and compress the time-frame of concluding a dispute.
‘In the earlier system, an Income-Tax return goes to an official in the same territorial jurisdiction of the taxpayer. But now, the algorithm decides where it would go for assessment thus bringing anonymity,’ Karmakar said.
Jahanzeb Akhter said the Income Tax department has disposed of around 8,000 cases under the first phase of faceless assessment system, which is still in its pilot form. ‘Out of them, Chennai centre has done 1900 assessments,’ she said