2017 (8) TMI 1325 - AT - Income Tax

Reopening of assessment - Held that:- Assessee was supplied with the reasons recorded and opportunity to raise objections thereto was given to him. It was availed as the assessee raised the objections against the validity of initiation of reopening proceedings and the Assessing Officer duly disposed off the said objections. The reason to believe was based on search operation in Bhushan Steel Group and survey at the assessee. We thus do not find substance in the contention of the ld. AR that initiation of reopening proceedings against the assessee was not valid. It is well established position of law that for initiation of reopening proceedings formation of reasons to belief is required to be based upon a prima facie view that taxable income has escaped assessment. Sufficiency of such belief cannot be questioned before the court of law. We thus do not find reason to interfere with the first appellate order in this regard, as in our view, the ld. CIT (Appeals) under the facts and circumstances of the case as discussed above has rightly upheld the validity of initiation of reopening proceedings. - Decided against assessee.

Addition u/s 68 - Held that:- There is no dispute that in case of all the 7 investor companies, the assessee had filed primary documents and had accordingly discharged its initial onus to establish identity and creditworthiness of the investor companies and genuineness of the transaction as there is no dispute that all the transactions have been done through banking channels i.e. through account payee cheques and demand drafts. We thus find that the Assessing Officer has failed to discharge its onus to prove that the documents filed by the assessee, as discussed above, were false or fabricated as the Assessing Officer has not made any efforts to verify those documents especially when there is no dispute that all the investor companies were filing their returns of income and were being assessed by the Department.

Under these circumstances, we are of the view that the ld. CIT (Appeals) was justified in deleting the addition of ₹ 5,50,00,000./- made under section 68 of the Act on account of unexplained share capital and share premium. - Decided in favour of assessee.