Faceless assessment & procedure: natural justice in the NFAC era

Faceless assessment moved the procedural ground under practitioners' feet: show-cause windows, portal service, video hearings and SOP timelines are now where assessments are won and lost. The courts have answered with a consistent principle: the machinery may be electronic, but natural justice is not optional.

The rulings here show the enforcement in practice: assessments quashed where the mandatory show-cause notice under CBDT Instruction 20/2015 never issued, a section 144B order set aside for giving under three days to respond against the seven-day minimum, a mechanical 20% pre-deposit demand returned for want of reasons, and a section 263 revision rejected because 'lack of inquiry' was asserted rather than shown from the record. The portal's new 'Response Viewed' status adds a timestamped evidentiary marker practitioners should be capturing in every file.

The working rule for CA firms: log the procedure as it happens. Dates, windows, service modes and portal statuses. The procedural record is frequently the strongest ground in the appeal.