For decades the assessment was done by local jurisdictional officer. The idea of faceless E-assessment was mooted in the Budget 2018 by the late Finance Minister, ArunJaitely, who announced the proposal to introduce the new assessment scheme to replace the old assessment system of manual scrutiny and face-to-face interaction with tax authorities.

The finance ministry has notified the E-assessment Scheme 2019 on 12.09.2019 for conducting faceless scrutiny assessment of Income tax returns. Further, it states that all communications with tax payers and among assessment centres etc. will be purely electronic; communications to be digitally authenticated; and most importantly assessees will not have to make personal appearance at centres.

Conduct of assessment proceedings through the e-proceedings facility may help in the speedy completion of scrutiny assessment. It will save time and efforts of visiting the tax office. The Scheme will have dedicated E-assessment centres such as the National E-assessment Centre, Regional E-assessment Centre, assessment units, verification units, technical units and reviewer units with each centre and unit having a clearly defined role and process to follow.

This Book serves as a ‘reference guide’ to help and assist the taxpayers, professionals and department in their e-assessment work.