Income Tax webinar on 'Faceless Assessment Scheme'

GUWAHATI: The Income-tax (IT) Department is conducting nationwide webinars on the "Faceless Assessment Scheme". In continuation of the same, a webinar was conducted by the office of the Principal Commissioner of Income tax, Jorhat & Shillong on August 27.

It was organized under the supervision of the Principal Chief Commissioner of Income Tax, North Eastern Region, Guwahati, with various stakeholders viz., the taxpayers, Chambers of Commerce, trade and industry associations, Income tax practitioners among others of Jorhat, Manipur, Nagaland, Sivasagar and Golaghat.

The webinar explain the salient features of the 'Faceless Assessment Scheme', announced by Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman in her Budget speech on July 5, 2019.

The Prime Minister launched the platform for 'Faceless Assessment Scheme' on August 13, 2020 to ease the compliance burden, increase fairness and objectivity in the assessment process and also to ensure fair, courteous and judicious treatment to the taxpayers.

The purpose of this webinar was to increase awareness about the 'Faceless Scheme' amongst the stakeholders and to obtain feedback including queries and suggestions from them for communication to the 'Central Board of Direct Taxes' (CBDT).

The webinar hosted by Rajkumar Haridas, ACIT, Imphal started with the welcome address by Rahul Karna, IRS, Principal Commissioner of Income tax, Jorhat and Shillong.

A power point presentation explained the various features of the scheme which would lead to anonymous and electronic assessment without human interface, where the Assessing Officer and the Assessee will be sitting at different corners of the country and would not know each other and there will not be any physical interaction between them.

In this scheme, there will be a single point for all communication with the taxpayer and the different functions of the assessment would be handled by a team of officers sitting at different locations. The legal framework and structure of the new system of assessment and the role of the 'National e-assessment Centre' and the regional e-assessment centers as well as the 'Residual Hierarchy' was discussed at length.

Rahul Karna, IRS, Principal Commissioner of Income tax, Jorhat and Shillong initiated the interactive question-answer session; and the answers to the queries of the participants were given by both Haridas and Karna. The stakeholders also provided valuable suggestions.

The Principal Commissioner Income Tax, Jorhat & Shillong, Rahul Karna, assured the stakeholders that the newly implemented scheme and measures would go a long way in creating a transparent and taxpayer-friendly environment of 'Honouring the Honest', the release adeded. 

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