Faceless tax assessment plan faces challenges

The revenue tax division is combating dozens of writ petitions by taxpayers looking for redress for grievances starting from insufficient time to file responses to opaque and arbitrary orders. The petitions have additionally challenged the constitutional validity of the scheme that goals to remove the bodily interface between assessing officers and taxpayers. The purpose of the scheme was to substitute the discretion of tax officers with a team-based method.

There are dozens of writs filed by taxpayers difficult the faceless evaluation scheme, a tax official stated, requesting anonymity.

Tax specialists stated such circumstances have elevated in quantity as a result of the brand new system has failed to provide taxpayers the chance to be heard, violating their rights.

“The aim of the faceless evaluation measure was to create a taxpayer-friendly system. Nevertheless, this has been turning out reverse to the identical as income has proceeded forward with out adhering to the rules of pure justice,” stated Amit Maheshwari, a companion at AKM International, a tax and consulting agency.

“No private listening to results in real challenges in circumstances involving advanced points and excessive quantities. Additionally, one other drawback is issuing of ultimate evaluation orders with out issuing draft orders, and in some circumstances, even the statutory process of issuing a show-cause discover has not been adopted.”

The disputed issues have been remanded again to the assessing officers generally as it’s properly settled in regulation that the supply of an appellate treatment doesn’t bar the maintainability of writ petitions in circumstances of violations of rules of pure justice, Maheshwari added.

Queries emailed to the spokesperson of the Central Board of Direct Taxes on Saturday remained unanswered.

One other tax practitioner claimed that in a single case, a taxpayer obtained two evaluation orders. “There’s a lack of communication between assessing officers and the Central Processing Centre of the revenue tax division. Giant companies are notably dealing with difficulties,” he stated, requesting anonymity.

“Whereas the faceless evaluation scheme is an effective one, there are some sensible points, basically on the executive and communication aspect. It’s affecting giant corporates. Steerage for the officers ought to come from the highest to handle taxpayers’ issues and could also be grievance redressal mechanism might be explored,” stated Neeru Ahuja, companion, Deloitte.

Abhishek A. Rastogi, a companion at Khaitan and Co., stated: “The opposite difficulty is expounded to the jurisdiction of the courtroom that should determine the place the writ is filed. The taxpayer could have obtained the registration in a specific state, could have a presence in a unique state/states, and the faceless order could have been handed in a totally completely different state.”

The writ petitions in excessive courts have challenged the constitutional validity of the faceless evaluation regime for being arbitrary and opposite to the settled rules of pure justice and administrative regulation.