‘Transparent Taxation’ launched on the 13th of August, 2020 is a platform to further digitize the functioning of the Income Tax Department. The stage aims to honor India’s taxpayers who have been honest and sincere with the paying of taxes and also the removal of physical interference between the taxpayer and the Income Tax Department. The faceless assessment and taxpayer charter has been started from 13th August 2020 itself whereas; the faceless appeal will begin from 25th September 2020. 

Transparent Taxation- Honoring the Honest

Three main features of the platform are faceless assessment, faceless appeal, and taxpayers’ charter.

The platform is launched by Prime Minister Modi who stated that ‘Transparent Taxation’ is a part of structural reform to direct taxation. It is a people-centric and public friendly push where the focus is on ‘minimum government, maximum governance’. 

• The platform will ensure to create awareness among the taxpayers and will help them to understand the tax reforms through timely professional assistance from the department. 
• Any other source of assessment other than the faceless design shall become invalid. Few exceptions are expected such as serious fraud, Black Money Act, major tax evasion, Benami Property. 
• This recent move will help taxpayers by providing them fair, courteous, and rational behavior to maintain taxpayer’s dignity and the valuable time and attempts. 

The platform appeals with other administrative coupled with the adoption of new-edge technology such as Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) to make the journey of the taxpayer, experience more ardent and transparent. 

• The system puts an end to territorial Jurisdiction. 
• A taxpayer may belong to a city but the assessment order, the review, and the finalization will take place in different cities. 
• It also ensures the ease of doing business and also eases of living, which has been strongly propagated. 

The ‘faceless team across India’ will be checking IT Returns as well as redress grievances. 

• Under this rule, the officers of the country will be allotted appeals randomly. 
• The identity of the officer deciding the appeal will remain unknown. Earlier, all the tax-related stuff in a city was dealt with by the Income Tax Department of that particular city. 
• Whereas now, with the help of technology, scrutiny will be done by a randomly selected IT officer from anywhere in the country.
•  From now onwards the taxpayers are not required to visit the income tax office or officer and the appellate decision will be team-based as well as revised. 

It is a request for the taxpayers to reach out to the taxpayer’s charter cell under the Principal Commissioner of income tax appointed for every zone to comply with the charter. 

PM Modi further highlighted the benefits of existing measures that will reduce complications in the course of action and tax rates. 

• No income tax will be charged on a net taxable income of up to Rs. 5 lakh. 
• On the rest of the tax slabs, the tax rates have been reduced. 

It is a promising initiative to reduce errors involved in passing orders and improving the working of the tax department.  

It is, therefore, a bold and strong step taken by the government of India, in its progress towards the ‘True Digital Economy’.

Have you filed Income Tax.