Friends, just as the baby caterpillar sheds its cocoon and metamorphose itself into a beautiful butterfly, the faceless assessment scheme, which was introduced as a pilot scheme for just 58,000 odd assessment cases in October, 2019, has now blossomed itself into its ‘PAN India Avatar’, with its full-scale implementation across the Country, covering almost the entire gamut of assessments and reassessments, barring just search and international taxation cases.
However, five years down the line, in the run up to the Union Budget 2024-25, speculations and rumours were rife that the Indian Tax Administration is considering introducing a hybrid mode of assessments, wherein the assessees will be given an option to choose from the faceless mode or the conventional manual m.