Finance secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey said preparations are being made to implement faceless income tax appeals from September 25. The income tax department has already rolled out pan-India faceless assessment facilities for all taxpayers from August 13.

“It is completely doable… there may be some teething troubles, but they can be addressed,” Pandey said at a webinar on Transparent Taxation organised by ET Markets and FICCI on Friday.

The department is studying whether cases of penalty and transfer pricing could be included in the faceless regime, he said when asked about procedures for transfer pricing and penalties. He added that pending appeals, cases will be resolved without direct interaction with the tax authorities, with a technical unit to help the appellate officer.

India’s taxation system will have to be aligned with the challenges of global mobility of people, the finance secretary said in response to a question on the need for simplification of taxes for non-resident Indians.

The government or the Central Board of Direct Taxes will have to be more aligned to such problems because these are recent phenomena and this problem will get highlighted more,” he said.

The faceless system will ease compliance and widen the tax base while doing away with discretion and subjectivity at the hands of tax officers, Pandey said.

“The move to a faceless system will lead to reduced compliance burden, lower cost of compliance and reduced litigation,” he said. “The faceless system will improve the ease of doing business and more people will come into the tax stream.”