All appeals up to the level of commissioner of income tax (appeal) except those relating to serious frauds, major tax evasion, sensitive search matters and black money went faceless from Friday. The commissioner of income tax (appeal) is the first level of appeal in I-T system against the order of assessing officers.
The facility of faceless appeal was introduced over a month after Prime Minister Narendra Modi expanded faceless tax assessment all over India.
This means that the income tax appeals right from e-allocation of appeal, e-communication of notice/ questionnaire, e-verification/e-enquiry to e-hearing and finally e-communication of the order will be online.
This will do away with the need for any physical interface between the appellant and the income tax department.
The faceless appeals system will include allocation of cases through data analytics and artificial intelligence to dynamic jurisdiction with central issuance of notices which would be having document identification number (DIN).
As part of dynamic jurisdiction, the draft appellate order will be prepared in one city and will be reviewed in some other city resulting in an objective, fair and just order, the finance ministry said.
ALSO READ: Faceless income tax assessment starts today: Here is all you need to know
The order passed by CIT (Appeals) will run through the risk management system (RMS), which uses artificial intelligence to flag outliers and picks up cases that require a review. The RMS technology is supported by Tata Consultancy Services. Cases requiring a review according to the RMS will be sent to a commissioner of appeals in a second city. “Based on the faceless appeals order, either the department or a taxpayer can move ITAT,” said an official.
The commissioner appeals will be allowed to take the help of technical units, comprising chief commissioner level officers, which are tasked with providing officers with legal and sectoral advice.
The faceless appeal will provide not only great convenience to the taxpayers but will also ensure just and fair appeal orders and minimise any further litigation, finance ministry said.
It said the new system will also be instrumental in imparting greater efficiency, transparency and accountability in the functioning of the department.
However, experts find some loopholes in the system.
For instance, Rakesh Nangia, chairman of Nangia Andersen India, said the scheme comes into effect immediately in full force without any pilot. "A pilot phase would have provided constructive feedback from the stakehodlers before the final launch PAN-India," he said.
Besides, personal hearing may be allowed in certain cases through video-conferencing, after approval of the principal chief commissioner (PrCCIT) or chief commissioners of income tax (CCIT).
Nangia said faceless appeals may pose practical difficulties for taxpayers who find the need to argue and counter argue the issue of to validate their tax position and to orally explain their complex business transactions.
ALSO READ: Tax Bill to expand faceless assessment scheme, provide relief to taxpayers
Amit Maheshwari, partner, AKM Global, said discussion in person becomes important at the first stage of appeal by the taxpayer, which is generally missing in faceless appeals.
“In the case of faceless appeal proceedings, most discussions generally happen electronically without any personal interaction, which ends up making the issue more complex,” he said.
However, a senior CBDT official pointed out that assessees are used to face-to-face hearing, whereas now they will need to develop the skill of writing. “If they expect self-explanatory orders, then you need to give self-explanatory submissions also,” he said
According to data the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT),there is a pendency of almost 4,60,000 appeals at the level of the Commissioner (Appeals) in the department as of date.
Out of this, about 4,05,000 appeals, constituting about 88 per cent of the total appeals, will be handled under the faceless appeal mechanism and almost 85 per cent of the present strength of Commissioners (Appeals) will be utilised for disposing of the cases under the faceless appeal mechanism.
No comments:
Post a Comment