An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, as F. No. 187/7/2019-ITA-I, dated 20 September 2019. Issued under para 4 of the E-assessment Scheme, 2019 (Notification No. 61 of 2019 dated 12 September 2019).
A Board letter setting up the National e-Assessment Centre. The Central Government had notified the E-assessment Scheme, 2019 by Notification No. 61 of 2019 on 12 September 2019, and para 4 of that Scheme leaves it to the Board to set up the centres through which faceless assessment is to run. This letter is the Board acting on that paragraph. It creates the NeAC at Delhi and sanctions the posts of income-tax authority that will man it.
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 Board sets up the National e-Assessment Centre with headquarters at Delhi and lists the posts that will staff it: a Principal Chief Commissioner of Income-tax (NeAC), Delhi; a Commissioner of Income-tax (NeAC), Delhi; two Additional or Joint Commissioners of Income-tax (NeAC), Delhi; four Deputy or Assistant Commissioners of Income-tax (NeAC), Delhi; and an Income-tax Officer (NeAC), Delhi. Ministerial staff, executive staff and consultants may be provided as considered necessary. The letter is an internal administrative sanction — it constitutes the machinery. It does not itself lay down the assessment procedure, which is in the Scheme.
The E-assessment Scheme, 2019 routes scrutiny assessment through a National e-Assessment Centre rather than the jurisdictional Assessing Officer, with all communication with the assessee passing through that centre. The Scheme could not begin to operate until the centre existed and had officers posted to it. Para 4 of the Scheme therefore left the setting up of the centre to the Board, and this letter does it, eight days after the Scheme was notified.
This is the Board organising its own machinery and it binds income-tax authorities alone. An assessee takes no right and no obligation from it. It also displaces nothing: if this letter and the Scheme were ever to differ, a court or the Tribunal would go by the Scheme and the Act, because a communication of the Board cannot bind them however clearly it is worded.
From the date of the letter, which the department lists as 20 September 2019, following Notification No. 61 of 2019 dated 12 September 2019. No deadline is set.
Do not treat this letter as the source of the faceless assessment procedure — that is in the Scheme notified on 12 September 2019, and this letter only creates the centre and its posts. It deals with the National centre alone; the Regional e-Assessment Centres are not covered. The printed date line on the scan is not clearly legible.
the Central Board of Direct Taxes hereby sets up National e-Assessment Centre (NeAC)
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order F. No. 187/7/2019-ITA-I, 20 September 2019. Read it in the department’s own PDF.
| Under the Income-tax Act, 1961 | Now, in the Income-tax Act, 2025 |
|---|---|
| section 143 | section 270 |
We charge fees for our public utility work. Does that cost us charitable status under s.2(15)?
Is a notice under s.143(2) a jurisdictional precondition, or merely a procedural step the Assessing Officer can skip?
My return was only processed under 143(1). Does that stop the department reopening it later?
The Income-tax Officer examined witnesses behind my back and used their statements against me. Is that material evidence at all?
No s.143(2) notice was issued at all. Does s.292BB save the assessment?
The company I represent amalgamated years ago, the department knew about it, and the assessment order still came in the old company's name. Is that order void, or can the department call it a curable slip?
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.
We did not read all of it. The department’s file returned only part of this document to us, so what is written above is written from the part we could read. Open the PDF before you rely on it.
What we could not settle. The date line is not legible on the scan; one reading of it gives 18 September 2019, while the department lists the letter under 20 September 2019, and that listing date is recorded here. The letter cites para 4 of the Scheme and the notification rather than a section of the Act, so the provisions list above records section 143 as the assessment provision the machinery serves. Any annexure beyond the list of posts was not read.