Complete time barring scrutiny assessments by 25th of December 2018 – CBDT direction

Complete time barring scrutiny assessments by 25th of December 2018 – CBDT direction to AOs over pendency of large number of cases

CBDT in its latest DO addressed to all Principal Chief Commissioners of Income Tax ( PrCCIT ) has expressed concern over pendency of large number of time barring scrutiny assessments for completion by the Assessing Officers. It is estimated that in some of the regions, the pendency is more than 85% of the total number of scrutiny assessment cases.

The CBDT has warned that in case if most of the pending assessments are pushed to the last fortnight of December, 2018, it would put an enormous strain on the Income Tax Business Application ( ITBA ) system.

CBDT has received the information that in cases where additions are made, the Assessing Officers are encountering problems in tax calculations on ITBA mainly due to entry of faulty data at their end which is giving rise to a large number of tickets related to tax calculation.

It has been stated that though the said tickets are being resolved by the Systems Directorate, it involves a time lag of at least 2-3 days. Therefore the CBDT has expressed apprehension that if a large number of time barring E-assessment related tickets are raised in the last few days of December, 2018, it is quite possible that many of these tickets might remain unresolved on the time barring date.

In view of the above, the CBDT has asked all PrCCITs to advise all Assessing Officers to enter the details of proposed additions on ITBA and complete the draft tax computation process at the earliest. This will enable the Assessing Officers to identify difficulties or errors in data entry so that they can take the assistance of the helpdesk at an early stage itself.

According to CBDT, timely correction and guidance will then ensure that the process is error-free at the time of the final order generation in ITBA. It is also suggested that body of the order can also be parallelly finalized .

Accordingly, all Assessing Officers have been directed to do a dry-run of the Income and Tax computation process by 7th December 2018.

It has been further directed that Assessing Officers should be sensitized to that fact that they should stagger their E-assessment related workload so that all assessments get uploaded by 25th of December, 2018 and no ticket is raised after the said date.

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