Nor can you raise any objections regarding the reasons for a raid before any of the authorities/appellate tribunals specifically created to deal with objections against tax assessments, including, according to multiple High Court decisions, search and seizure operations.

This may not seem like a huge deal to the average person. First off, you may consider yourself to be a law-abiding, taxpaying citizen, so why worry about raids? Secondly, the proposal doesn’t say reasons don’t have to exist, and in fact does not preclude the submission of reasons to the courts.

It isn’t that simple, of course. As illustrated in this informative article by Ajay Mankotia, a former revenue officer, the basis on which raids are conducted can be extremely dubious, involving informants with grudges, or instructions from high-powered officers, or even just an income tax officer’s mistake.

One of the checks on the process being too arbitrary was the fact that a raid could be challenged fairly early on in the appeals process by a victim, and in a convenient manner, before the tax tribunals.