The Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) has registered a case against One Deputy Commissioner (IRS) (IT) & two Inspectors of Income Tax Department, five Chartered Accountants and one private person and unknown others on the allegations of attempts by these accused to defy and sabotage the purpose of the Faceless Scheme of Assessment introduced by the Government of India.
Recently the Government of India has introduced a series of futuristic reforms in Direct Tax administration for the benefit of taxpayers and the economy. ‘Faceless Scheme of assessment’ is one such reform where there is no human interface between taxpayers and tax officials. The Scheme is accordingly designed so that, the assessee does not come to know who the assessment/appellate officers are.
However, to beat this system, a group of CAs in active assistance and criminal conspiracy with some income tax officials were unauthorizedly and clandestinely disclosing the names of Assessing officers/Appellate officers to the assessees and also unauthorizedly using the sensitive income tax data pertaining to pending assessment or appeal cases and high refund cases to approach the concerned assessee or his CA for pecuniary benefits.
The information disclosed by these accused facilitates the assessee to physically contact the Assessing/Appellate officer. Thus, the accused were trying to sabotage the ‘Faceless Scheme of Assessment’ brought in by the Government of India.
In this connection, CBI conducted searches at 18 places at Delhi, Mumbai, Thane, West Champaran (Bihar), Bengaluru, Kottayam (Kerala), etc. Various incriminating documents, evidences of payment of undue gratification and some digital electronic evidences have been recovered during searches.
