new Delhi: From setting up review panels to giving time to assessees to respond to show cause notices and setting up a parallel verification system, the Income Tax Department has renewed checks and balances in its faceless assessment scheme to make it more robust. has worked on.

tax officer It said some of the changes were implemented at the beginning of the financial year itself, when 20 committees were constituted to address concerns over the high valuations raised by some taxpayers. “Based on the committee’s review, we will establish whether the assessments are fair or not,” a senior official said.

As another safeguard, Central Board of Direct Taxes A monitoring committee has also been constituted to look into these reviews.

With faceless assessment being a pet project of the present government, the department is trying to ensure that the entire process is smooth and foolproof. Indeed, a new set of Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) has been introduced.

The move comes amid cases with the scheme being criticized in some high courts. Allahabad In recent times, H.C. “We have already taken several steps as we are also learning from practice and want the whole process to help the taxpayer and provide a better experience,” the senior official said.

As per the data shared by the IT department, over 2.8 lakh cases have been taken for faceless assessment so far, with almost 85% of the cases with no increase in income (see graphic).

Based on the experience, a major objective is to increase the capacity with the department to deal with the change in governance for which officers are being trained and new SOPs implemented.

Therefore, an Assessing Officer who now gets some information about the taxpayer may approach a third party to verify the information. This is considered especially important when the department is collecting data from multiple sources, which is often not corroborated by the assessee. Furthermore, with the data available through the Annual Information Statement, taxpayers are encouraged to point out inaccuracies.

“We go back to the source of the information in AIS to check the veracity of the data. Also, if an item is marked in the comment column, our officers have to check it at the time of evaluation,” explained a senior official. .

Similarly, the SOP now provides for mandatorily sharing of the draft assessment order with the taxpayer and seeks to ensure that at least seven days are given to respond. Exactly the same for show cause notices, where the authorities have been asked to provide sufficient time to ensure that the principle of natural justice is followed.

Officials said changes have also been made in the software to flag certain issues, while a system of alerts has been put in place for the Assessing Officer and Supervisory Officers to ensure that the assessee is given time to respond. Is.

Further, the department has exhausted the discretion to allow interaction through video conferencing with rules that the request from the assessee is to be accepted.