Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched a platform to honour and appreciate the honest taxpayers of the country.

Transparent Taxation – Honouring The Honest’ platform will introduce reforms such as faceless assessment, faceless appeal, and taxpayers charter. Faceless assessment and taxpayers charter come into force from 13th August whereas faceless appeal reform will be available from Sept 25.

Faceless Assessment, Faceless Appeal and Taxpayers’ Charter are the three main features of the platform.

Faceless Assessment and Appeal aims to impart greater efficiency, transparency and accountability while eliminating physical interface between the taxpayers and income tax (IT) department.  This feature is expected to abolish territorial jurisdiction as cases will be picked and allocated to any officer in the country randomly. Further, IT notices will be issued centrally and taxpayers will not need to visit tax office, eliminating the need for physical interface. The platform is aimed at bringing more transparency in official communication through the newly-introduced Document Identification Number (DIN).The platform will use technologies such as data analytics and Artificial Intelligence (AI).

Under taxpayers’ charter, the IT department aims to keep taxpayer’s interests and rights at the forefront. The IT department shall provide an impartial appeal and review mechanism, resolve tax-issues in a time-bound manner and hold its officials accountable for their actions, as per the official statement of CBDT. The taxpayers’ charter was proposed in the Union Budget 2020 by FM.