The Central government is planning to begin faceless assessment of Central GST (CGST) registered businesses, and the efforts are on to start the process in a couple of months, sources in the government said. The change is not part of the GST Council discussion, as it is meant only for CGST registered taxpayers, and hence do not require the council’s approval.
There is no formal framework or announced timeline for a comprehensive faceless GST assessment regime at present. But given the direction in which GST technology and data analytics are evolving, it is believe this is an eventual and natural next step in the maturation of GST administration.
“We are working towards it, and we hope to begin the assessment in a couple of months,” said a central GST official on the condition of anonymity. He added that initially only those entities under the Central GST department would be assessed without the need for tax officers meeting the assessee physically. Later states can adopt the model at their levels. Kerala became the first state in India to launch a pilot program for faceless GST assessment.
“Faceless assessment is eventually where GST should be headed. The GST ecosystem today is increasingly driven by data, e-invoicing, return analytics, e-way bills and risk-based identification of taxpayers. The next logical step is to use this rich data environment to move routine assessments away from officer–taxpayer interactions and towards a technology-driven, faceless and risk-based assessment mechanism, much like the evolution seen under income tax,” says Rajat Mohan, Managing Partner at AMRG Associates.