What is faceless income tax assessment scheme? Key things to know livemint. Updated: 13 Aug 2020, 03:39 PM IST

Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his video conference on 'Transparent Taxation - Honoring the Honest' announced to launch Faceless Assessment, Faceless Appeal and Taxpayers Charter. While Faceless Assessment and Taxpayers Charter will come in force from today, Faceless Appeal will be available from September 25.

Under the Faceless Appeals system introduced by the government, appeals will be randomly allotted to any officer across the country and the identity of the officer deciding the appeal will remain unknown. Further, decisions will be team-based.

"Till now, all tax-related matters in a city are dealt by Income Tax department of that city, IT officers of that city play main role. Now on, using technology, scrutiny will be done by a randomly chosen IT officer anywhere in the country," said PM.

Here are the features of Faceless Appeals System:

• Appeals to be randomly allotted to any officer in the country.
• The identification of the officers deciding appeal will remain unknown.
• The tax payer will not be required to visit the income tax office or the officer.
• The appellate decision will be team-bSaed and reviewed.

Exceptions to Faceless Appeal

The exceptions to the Faceless Appeal includes, serious frauds, major tax evasion, sensitive and search matters. The system also excludes international taxation and Black Money Act & Benami Property.

Narendra Modi during his video conference said the goal is to make the system of filling ITR, seamless, painless and faceless.

PM also urged the citizens to be responsible and pay their taxes.

"Amidst all these efforts, the number of people filing income tax returns has increased by about two and a half crores in the last 6-7 years. But it is also true that in a country of 130 crores it is still very less," said the Prime Minister.

"Out of all the tax returns in the year 2012-13, there was scrutiny of 0.94%. In the year 2018-19, this figure has come down to 0.26%. This indicates that the scrutiny of the case has reduced by almost 4 times," PM added.