Amid the perception that the various schemes for resolution of tax disputes run in recent years have yielded only moderate results in reducing the load of tax litigation, finance secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey on Friday said the new system of faceless assessment and appeal would ‘strike at the root of the problem’ and help bring down the disputes substantially.

Speaking at the Indian Express Idea Exchange programme, he said the revised estimates of revenue and expenditure for the current financial year were realistic. If gross direct tax collections were down 6.7% on year by January, the gap would be much narrower by the end of the year, as the slump was partly due to liberal refunds of around Rs 1.91 lakh crore. He also said tax buoyancy of 1.16 estimated for FY22 was neither conservative or unduly optimistic (buoyancy has been in the negative territory in FY20 and FY21).