An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, as F. No. 187/3/2020-ITA-I, dated 6 September 2021. Issued under section 119.
An order of the Board under section 119 partially modifying its order of 13th August, 2020, read with the order of 31st March, 2021, which had required assessment orders to be passed through the National Faceless Assessment Centre. Two exceptions already existed, for cases assigned to the Central Charges and for cases assigned to the International Tax Charges. This order adds a third, for cases the department's own systems cannot carry.
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.
The order provides that assessment orders need not be passed through the National Faceless Assessment Centre in three classes of case: assessment orders in cases assigned to Central Charges; assessment orders in cases assigned to International Tax Charges; and assessment orders in cases where pendency could not be created on ITBA because of technical reasons, or cases not having a PAN. The third class is what this order adds. Such assessments fall to the jurisdictional assessing officer in the ordinary way. The order is made in partial modification of the order of 13th August, 2020 read with that of 31st March, 2021, and comes into effect immediately.
Faceless assessment is worked entirely inside the Income Tax Business Application, and a case that cannot be opened on that system, or a person who has no PAN at all, cannot be routed through it however clear the general direction may be. Without an exception those cases would have been in limbo, incapable of assessment through the prescribed route and, on the face of the earlier order, incapable of assessment any other way. The Board closed that gap.
The order binds the department and decides which of its officers assesses a given case. It gives the assessee no right, no choice and no ground of objection of itself; he cannot demand a faceless assessment because of it, nor resist one. It does not bind the Tribunal or a court, which will judge an assessment made outside the faceless route against section 144B and the Board's power to exclude cases from it.
Issued 6th September, 2021 and effective immediately, modifying the order of 13th August, 2020 read with that of 31st March, 2021. It was itself modified again on 22nd September, 2021 and 16th December, 2021.
The third exception is a technical one and its foundation is a fact about the department's systems, not about the assessee. Where an assessment has been made outside section 144B on this basis, the record should show why a pendency could not be created on ITBA. Note that this order is one link in a chain and the current exclusions can only be worked out by reading the whole series.
Assessment Orders in cases where pendency could not be created on ITBA because of technical reasons or cases not having a PAN
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order F. No. 187/3/2020-ITA-I, 6 September 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 119 | section 239 |
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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.