An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, as F. No. 187/3/2020-ITA-I, dated 22 September 2021. Issued under section 144B(2).
An order of the Board under sub-section (2) of section 144B, the provision that lets the Board specify the persons and cases in which faceless assessment applies. It is the companion to the section 119 order of the same date and makes the same carve-out under the other head of power, in partial modification of the orders of 31st March, 2021 and 6th September, 2021. The subject line itself records that it deals with cases in which limitation expired on 30.09.2021.
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 excludes from the scope of section 144B assessments in cases set aside to be done de novo or to be done under section 147, where the time limit for completion expires on 30.09.2021, which were pending with the assessing officer as on 11.09.2021 or thereafter, and which cannot be completed in accordance with the procedure laid down in section 144B because of technical or procedural constraints within the period of limitation available. Those assessments are accordingly to be made by the jurisdictional assessing officer in the ordinary way. The order operates by partial modification of the orders of 31st March, 2021 and 6th September, 2021 and comes into effect immediately.
The Board evidently took the view that a carve-out from faceless assessment was safer if made under both the specific power in section 144B(2) and the general power in section 119, and so issued the two orders together. On the merits, set-aside and section 147 cases reaching the department close to their time-barring date could not be put through the multi-unit faceless procedure in the days remaining, and would otherwise have become barred without an assessment being made at all.
A direction to the department. It decides which officer makes the assessment and confers nothing on the assessee, who has no right to insist on the faceless route. It does not bind the Tribunal or a court, and the courts have in fact been asked more than once whether the Board may lift a statutory procedure in this way; the answer to that comes from section 144B, not from the order.
Issued 22nd September, 2021 and effective immediately. It applies to cases pending with the assessing officer on or after 11.09.2021 whose limitation expired on 30.09.2021.
Read this order together with the section 119 order of the same date; they cover the same ground under different powers and neither is complete without the other. All the conditions are cumulative, and the dates of 11.09.2021 and 30.09.2021 are exact. An assessment made outside section 144B in a case that does not answer every condition is not saved by this order.
set aside to be done de novo or to be done u/s 147 of the Act
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order F. No. 187/3/2020-ITA-I, 22 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 147 | section 279 |
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.