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 144B(2).
An order of the Board under sub-section (2) of section 144B adding a further exclusion to the scope of faceless assessment. It modifies the Board's order of 31st March, 2021 as already amended on 6th and 22nd September, 2021, and takes out of section 144B every case in which the assessment is connected with a survey under section 133A, whether the survey came first or was carried out while the assessment was already running.
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.
Cases where assessment proceedings are pending or have been initiated pursuant to action under section 133A, and cases where action under section 133A is conducted during ongoing assessment proceedings, are excluded from the purview of section 144B. Such assessments are therefore not to be made through the National Faceless Assessment Centre. The order works by partial modification of the order of 31st March, 2021 and the amendments of 6th and 22nd September, 2021, and leaves the rest of that structure standing. It states that it comes into effect immediately and directs circulation to the income-tax authorities concerned and to the public.
A survey produces impounded books, statements recorded on the spot and material that has to be put to the assessee and tested against what is found on the premises. That kind of enquiry does not sit easily in a procedure built on written exchanges between units that never see the assessee or the premises. The Board therefore treated survey-linked assessments in the same way as search cases and took them out of the faceless route altogether.
The order binds the department. It settles which arm of the department will make the assessment and gives the assessee neither a right to a faceless assessment nor a ground of complaint if he does not get one. It has no binding force on the Tribunal or a court, which will decide any dispute about the validity of an assessment on section 144B and on the extent of the Board's power under sub-section (2).
Issued 16th December, 2021 and effective immediately, modifying the orders of 31st March, 2021, 6th September, 2021 and 22nd September, 2021.
The exclusion catches a survey conducted after the assessment has begun, not merely one that preceded it, so a case can move out of the faceless route in the middle of the proceeding. Read this order with its companion of the same date issued under section 119, which routes the same class of case to the Central Charges under section 127.
Cases where assessment proceedings are pending/initiated pursuant to action u/s 133A of the Act or where action u/s 133A of the Act is conducted in ongoing assessment proceedings
— 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 |
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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.