Faceless Procedure Before – ITAT – Whether Valid – Vice or Virtue


By Ajay Wadhwa, Advocate, New Delhi

Executive Summary

No professional practicing before the Assessing Officer or the Commissioner of Income tax (Appeal), (CIT(Appeal)) can ever forget instances of waiting outside the room of the concerned officer for hours together, with bags overflowing with books of account, vouchers and other documentary evidence and often being told to come back again the next day because the officer was busy with some important work or had more important hearings or was generally unavailable that day.

No professional practicing before the Assessing Officer or the Commissioner of Income tax (Appeal), (CIT(Appeal)) can ever forget instances of waiting outside the room of the concerned officer for hours together, with bags overflowing with books of account, vouchers and other documentary evidence and often being told to come back again the next day because the officer was busy with some important work or had more important hearings or was generally unavailable that day.

One cannot forget the times when numerous hearings would ensue and the file of the officer would be riddled with hundreds and thousands of papers and often one would be disappointed to receive an assessment order without much discussion on the taxpayer’s contentions and entailing huge additions to income, divorced from the facts on record.

About the Author: Source: Published in AIFTP Journal - Feb., 2021 issues

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Posted on: March 1st, 2021


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One comment on “Faceless Procedure Before – ITAT – Whether Valid – Vice or Virtue
  1. Pramod Baxi says:

    It is funny that people were silent/supportive when assessments went faceless and now when ITAT has gone on that path, people have started feeling the threat to ‘dhanda’

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