Block assessment is back in India’s search-tax architecture, promising faster anti-evasion action but reopening a harder question: can speed, abatement and compressed procedure coexist with taxpayer safeguards?
Faceless appeal has survived India’s new tax statute, but not through a neat legislative reset. The real story lies in the savings clause, NFAC continuity and the growing centralisation of tax appellate process.
India's tax rewrite does not wipe away the 1961 Act's afterlife. Section 536 preserves pending appeals, refunds, losses, search cases and old liabilities, while quietly narrowing several transition arguments.
Digital evidence in search cases is changing how tax disputes are built and defended. Metadata, audit trails and system history now shape the burden of explanation far more than many taxpayers realise
Section 148 still dominates tax conversations, but reopening is no longer the Department’s only preferred battlefield. In 2025–26, revision is increasingly the cleaner weapon against weak assessments, while search has been pushed into a separate, evidence-heavy block-assessment track.
Section 263 has moved to section 377 under the Income-tax Act, 2025, but the real story is not the renumbering. It is the cleaner limitation machinery, tighter transition rules, and the continuing risk from weak assessment records.
CBDT Circular 4/2026 and the Finance Act, 2026 have changed the DIN debate. A missing audit trail can still be fatal, but a mere quoting defect is now harder to weaponise.