An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, as F. No. 187/3/2020-ITA-I, dated 16 December 2021. Issued under section 119.
An order of the Board under section 119 issued alongside its order of the same date under section 144B(2). Where that order takes survey-linked assessments out of the faceless route, this one says where they are to go instead. It adds a further exception to the Board's earlier orders of 31st March, 2021, 6th September, 2021 and 22nd September, 2021, which had required assessment orders to be passed through the National Faceless Assessment Centre.
This is an order of the Board. An order is issued under a power the Act itself gives the Board — most often section 119, which lets it direct its own officers and, in the cases the section names, relax a requirement. Read the enabling words before deciding how far it reaches: the power is administrative, and it cannot rewrite the charge.
All cases, other than international taxation cases, in which assessment proceedings are pending or have been initiated pursuant to action under section 133A, are to be transferred to the Central Charges by an order under section 127, and the assessment in such cases is to be completed by the Central Charges only. The order therefore does two things at once: it removes the case from the National Faceless Assessment Centre and it fixes the destination. It is made by partial modification of the earlier orders in the series, leaves their remaining exceptions intact, and comes into effect immediately.
Taking a class of case out of faceless assessment leaves an obvious question: who then makes the assessment. Survey material is of the same character as search material, and the department's Central Charges are the wing built to handle it, with the officers and the record-keeping that go with impounded books and recorded statements. The Board therefore directed a transfer under section 127 so that survey-linked assessments would be concentrated there rather than being scattered back to jurisdictional officers.
The order binds the department alone. It gives the assessee no say in the transfer, although the transfer itself must still be made by an order under section 127, which carries its own requirements of notice and reasons. The Board's order is not a substitute for that. Neither the Tribunal nor a court is bound by it, and the validity of any transfer will be judged on section 127 rather than on this direction.
Issued 16th December, 2021 and effective immediately, modifying the orders of 31st March, 2021, 6th September, 2021 and 22nd September, 2021.
Note the carve-out for international taxation cases, which are not sent to the Central Charges by this order. Note also that the actual transfer requires a separate order under section 127; a case cannot be treated as centralised merely because this Board order says it should be, and a section 127 order made without complying with that section is vulnerable however clear the Board's direction.
Assessment in such cases shall be completed by Central Charges only
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order F. No. 187/3/2020-ITA-I, 16 December 2021. Read it in the department’s own PDF.
| Under the Income-tax Act, 1961 | Now, in the Income-tax Act, 2025 |
|---|---|
| section 144B | section 273 |
| section 133A | section 253, section 261 |
| section 127 | section 243 |
The High Court quashed my s.148 notice because the ward officer issued it instead of the faceless unit. Does that judgment still stand?
The faceless order came without any show-cause notice or draft order. Will it just be annulled?
I did not tick s.115BAA in the return and filed Form 10-IC late. Can I still get the concessional rate?
The faceless show-cause notice gave me four days to reply. Is that enough time?
I asked for a personal hearing in the faceless assessment and was refused. Does the order survive?
Can a faceless order stand if the mandatory procedure was skipped?
What here is the Board’s and what is ours. The document is the Central Board of Direct Taxes’ own. Its number, its date and the words quoted above are reproduced from the Board’s own PDF, which is here. Everything else on this page is ours: the plain-English account of what the document is and what it does, the reading of which provision it turns on, the note on what to watch, and the choice of cases. Where our account and the document part, the document governs.
An order of the Board binds the department, not you and not a court. The Board writes to its own officers. An assessee may hold the department to an order or an instruction that helps him; the department cannot hold an assessee to one that hurts him, and the Tribunal and the courts decide the law for themselves. This is the most common mistake made with this material, and it is worth making twice: a direction of the Board is not a section of the Act.
What we could not settle. The file number was read from an imperfect text layer, which rendered the prefix as F.O. rather than F. No.