Faceless assessments should be made more flexible

[Vivek Jalan]

Prescribe conditions based on which taxpayers can seek to be assessed by Jurisdictional Assessing officer (‘JAOs’) instead of NFAC:

Introducing faceless assessment has obvious advantages, but for Large Taxpayers it is a practical challenge for the officer to understand facelessly, the nitti-gritties. For Eg. A Large Taxpayer may have more than 10,000 creditors ledgers and even if he submits it to the officer, it is practically impossible for the officer to understand it unless one explains. Due to this hardship many a times high pitched demands are raised on issues which can easily be resolved in one manual hearing. Hence it is suggested to prescribe conditions based on which taxpayers can seek to be assessed by Jurisdictional Assessing officer (‘JAOs’) for manual tax assessment instead of NFAC for faceless assessment. It would be beneficial as there would be a personalized, localized approach for complex businesses.

Recording of videoconferencing to be readily available on income-tax website: The income tax law allows for the conduct of assessment proceedings via video conferencing. The efforts made are acknowledged wherein these video conference are recorded by the service provider and sent through a link to the email address registered on the income-tax portal. However, there is room for some improvements.

First, it is noticed that the links to these recordings have a limited validity period. Moreover, in certain instances, it has come to attention that these links are not consistently received by taxpayers. Therefore, it is suggested that these recordings be made accessible on the taxpayers on the income tax e-filing portal itself. Furthermore, it would be beneficial to extend the duration during which these recording copies can be downloaded, ideally to a minimum of three years from the date of the video conferencing proceedings.