Tax Audit Notice Recovery Director

The mandate

The interim Director will recover control of direct-tax notices and information requests whose receipt, ownership, evidence and response status are not consistently reconciled. The appointee must begin within two weeks, protect every available procedural right and establish one truthful portfolio view. The assignment is not authority representation for every matter; it is an eight-month recovery with permanent case ownership as the exit condition.

The first ten business days will reconcile physical and electronic receipts, portal records, correspondence, due dates, extensions, response drafts and evidence locations. Each request will be classified by procedural urgency, financial exposure, breadth, precedent and factual effort. Duplicated or conflicting answers across matters must be found before new submissions reinforce them.

Temporary authority includes assigning case owners, setting response standards, returning unsupported drafts, approving routine submissions within delegation and commissioning scoped advice. Formal representation, settlement, litigation, material concessions and statutory sign-off remain reserved. GST notices, routine return production and unselected historical disputes are excluded.

Handover starts once the priority backlog is controlled. Two permanent owners will lead response strategy, evidence review and deadline governance for successive cycles under observation. Exit requires no unowned notices, protected deadlines, indexed submissions, a cross-case consistency log, current accounting exposure and written acceptance by the Head of Tax Controversy.

What you will own

• Reconcile all in-scope notices and requests to receipt evidence, legal deadline, extension, owner, amount, issue, response and approving authority.
• Triage the portfolio by procedural loss, cash exposure, precedent, information breadth and remaining evidence lead time.
• Establish response standards that separate certified facts, technical interpretation, assumptions, privilege and reserved approval.
• Return submissions that over-answer, contradict prior positions, rely on missing evidence or fail to address the authority's actual request.
• Build a consistency ledger linking recurring facts and positions across assessment years, entities and parallel authority matters.
• Reconcile material notice developments to uncertain-tax-position accounting and cash forecasts without conflating the records.
• Prepare permanent owners through two supervised response cycles and a simulated late-arriving information request.
• Transfer complete chronologies, evidence indexes, procedural calendars, residual decisions and signed owner acceptance.

Candidate qualifications

• Chartered Accountant qualification and at least 15 years in Indian direct-tax assessments or controversy, including Director-level remediation.
• A notice portfolio you recovered after deadline or ownership failure, with proof that procedural rights and response consistency were restored.
• Experience preparing factual and technical responses, seeking extensions, controlling portal evidence and escalating reserved concessions.
• A case where you identified contradiction between responses across periods or matters before submission.
• Ability to decide when a request should be answered narrowly, challenged procedurally or supported by specialist advice.
• Evidence of linking controversy developments to accounting and cash owners without directing their conclusions.
• A handover record involving live permanent-owner decisions and accepted case files.

Working terms and boundaries

• The eight-month engagement is five days a week; extension is capped at six weeks and requires an external deadline blocking successor handover.
• The interim sets response process and delegated approvals; representation, settlement, litigation and material concessions remain reserved.
• GST, routine returns and unselected historic disputes are outside scope and retain separate owners.
• On-site Bengaluru work is required through backlog reconciliation and the first recovered response cycle.
• Completion requires protected rights, no unowned notices, consistent evidence, successor-led cycles and formal portfolio acceptance.

Application

Applications for this mandate are received in one way only: through the India Board Terminal's application process. It is automated end to end. Your Executive Passport travels to the mandate holder in its confidential form, your answers to the three questions below are read before anything else in your file, and every stage that follows is recorded on your applications page.

There is no address to write to and no intermediary to call. The mandate holder reads what the Terminal delivers and nothing else, which is what keeps the process the same for every applicant and keeps your name out of it until you release it. Applications close on 6 October 2026. Mandate reference TAX-INT-2026-BLR-50.