The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) launched Faceless Income Tax Appeals on September 25 to "honour honest I-T payers in the country". All income tax assessments -- ranging from e-allocation of appeals, to e-communication of notices, e-verification, e-enquiry and e-hearing -- will now take place online.

There are certain exception under the faceless ecosystem such as serious frauds, major tax evasion, sensitive and search matters, International tax and Black Money Act.

On August 13, Prime Minister Narendra Modi launched the Faceless Assessment and Taxpayers’ Charter as part of the “Transparent Taxation - Honoring the Honest” platform. At the time, he had announced that the Faceless I-T Appeals would be launched on September 25, the birth anniversary of Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyaya.

The CBDT said on September 25 that Faceless I-T Appeals would dispense the need for any physical interface between the appellant and the department. Taxpayers can make submissions from the comfort of their home and save time and resources.

According to CBDT, the Faceless Appeals system will include allocation of cases through Data Analytics and AI under the dynamic jurisdiction with central issuance of notices with Document Identification Number (DIN).

As part of the dynamic jurisdiction, the draft appellate order will be prepared in one city and will be reviewed in another, to ensure it is fair and just and there are no further litigations.

As per CBDT data, to date there over 4.6 lakh pending appeals with the Commissioner (Appeals) level in the department. Out of this, about 4.05 lakh appeals will be handled under the Faceless Appeal mechanism and almost 85 percent of the present strength of Commissioners (Appeals) will be utilised for disposing off the cases.