August 11I 2019 I BUSINESS TODAYI 51ByDIPAK MONDAL
ILLUSTRATION BY RAJ VERMA
FINANCE MINISTER NIRMALA
SITHARAMAN WANTS TAX
ASSESSMENTS TO BE DIGITAL
AND FACELESS, BUT THE
EXPERIENCE SO FAR HAS BEEN
FAR FROM DESIRABLE.
E-ASSESSMENT CASES
WERE COMPLETED
IN 2016/1714,000
fter giving a mighty push to the
less-cash economy, digital gov-
ernance seems to be the next big
thing on the current government’s
agenda, going by what Nirmala
Sitharaman said in her Budget
speech. The finance minister told
Parliament “the existing system of (income tax)
scrutiny involves a high level of personal interac-
tion between the taxpayer and the tax department,
which leads to certain undesirable practices on the
part of tax officials. To eliminate such instances, a
scheme of faceless assessment in electronic mode
involving no human interface will be rolled out this
year in a phased manner.” Sitharaman never ut-
tered the word ‘corruption’, but this might be her
honest admission of how the IT Department had
gone about its business to meet revenue targets and
the subsequent fallout.
Electronic assessment, or e-assessment, is consid-
ered a big leap towards curbing taxpayer harassment
by unscrupulous taxmen. The government started
it as a pilot project in FY2015/16 and later extended
the programme to more than 100 cities to test its ef-
ficiency and transparency. But in her haste to launch
it on a bigger scale, the finance minister might have
overlooked some of the ‘shortcomings’ of the faceless
assessment procedure.
Not Yet Anonymous
According to Sitharaman, the cases selected for scru-
tiny will be randomly allocated to assessment units,
and a central cell will send notices via e-mail, without
disclosing the name, designation or location of the as-
sessing officer (AO). In fact, the central cell will be the
single point of contact between the taxpayer and the
IT Department. Although this is the ultimate model
the government is pursuing, the current system, even
three years after the pilot, is nowhere close to it.
Arun Kumar Jagatramka, former Chairman and
Managing Director of the now-defunct Gujarat NRE
Coke, concurs. “The government calls it faceless as-
sessment, but the fact is, both assessee and the tax of-
ficer (assigned to the case) know each other. The latter
can even call the a ssessee to demand money,” he said in
one of the post-Budget interactions with finance min-
istry and tax officials.TROUBLED
TURF
A