‘Faceless’ Tax Assessment Launched: Biggest Tax Reform In India? What It Is, How Will It Work?

The Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, has announced the launch of a new platform to honor those citizens who pay their taxes honestly.

This program will be called “Transparent Taxation – Honoring The Honest” and it is supposedly the biggest tax reform the country has ever seen. Some major changes in the tax system will be enforced under this initiative, including faceless tax assessment.

Find out all the details about this new platform right here!

PM Modi Announced Transparent Taxation: Big Tax Reforms To Honor The Honest Taxpayers

The new platform, Transparent Taxation – Honoring The Honest, will include multiple tax reforms, including faceless assessment, faceless appeal, and taxpayers charter. As per PM Modi, this new platform will change the way in which taxes are being paid in the country. 

In this, faceless teams will be verifying the IT returns and will address grievances across the country. During a video conference, the PM said, “Faceless assessment and taxpayers charter come in force from today, whereas faceless appeal service will be available from September 25.”

Faceless Appeals – Herein, appeals will be randomly allotted to any random officer in the country with their identity kept hidden. As decoded by the Minister of State (MoS), Finance, Anurag Singh Thakur, these teams will be picked randomly and from any city to deal with all matters related to tax. What was taken care of by the Income Tax department till now will be done by a randomly selected IT officer anywhere in India with the help of technology.

The taxpayer will also not be required to visit the income tax office or the officer. The entire decision will be team-based and reviewed except in the cases of serious frauds, major tax evasions, Black Money Act, Benami property.

Faceless Assessment – Faceless assessment will take care that there is no interface between the taxpayer and the income tax department. Under this feature, a taxpayer can be selected only through the systems that are using analytics and artificial intelligence. The taxpayer may be based out of any City and the assessment of the tax the review and the finalization will happen in different cities. As per reports the cases will be randomly and automatically allotted.

Here also, the tax payer will not be required to visit the income tax office or any officer. The decision will entirely be team-based and reviewed. also other than the exceptions outside the faceless scheme any assessment will be regarded invalid.