Home Case Index All Cases Income Tax Income Tax + AT Income Tax - 2012 (10) TMI AT This
Forgot password New User/ Regiser ⇒ Register to get Live Demo
2012 (10) TMI 542 - AT - Income TaxCorpus donation - misapplication of corpus fund - Exemption of divided income and the interest income u/s 10(34) and 10(15)denied - assessee trust is registered u/s 12A r.w.s 12AA - Held that:- A conjoint reading of provisions of Indian Trust Act, 1882 leads to inescapable conclusion that the primary object of the trustees is to protect the interest of the trust. In order to discharge this responsibility, the trustees are entitled to take appropriate decisions in the interest of trust. If the revenue's contention is to be accepted then it would imply that since a charitable trust is bound to keep its investments in the securities specified u/s 11(5) then it should not have accepted the shares. In our opinion, too much deliberation is not required to reject this contention of the revenue. Therefore, this objection is devoid of any merit because there is no restriction on accepting shares by a charitable institution. The only restriction is to be found in section 13(1)(d) as per which the assessee charitable trust is required to hold its investments in the modes as prescribed u/s 11(5). The proviso (iia) to section 13(1)(d)(iii) entitles an assessee trust to hold the shares for a maximum period of one year before which it has to be converted into the modes of investment as prescribed in section 11(5). There is no dispute that income of the corpus fund could be utilized towards the objects of the trust. The only objection is that corpus could not be depleted. This objection of department cannot be sustained particularly because the conditions contemplated u/s 11(1)(d) stand satisfied when a voluntary donation is received with a specific direction that they shall form part of the corpus of the trust. No further condition is prescribed in the Act on utilization of corpus fund. Considering provision of Sec.11, 12 & 13 the revenue's contention cannot be accepted that assessee had adopted a colourable device by first accepting the shares and then selling these shares. The assessee's conduct was well within statutory provisions and, therefore, cannot be branded as colourable device. The trustee is bound to conduct himself in the best interest of trust. Therefore, both the conducts viz receiving the shares as a gift from the private trust towards its corpus and its liquidation in terms proviso (iia) to sub-section 13(1)(d)(iii) was fully justified. Revenue's submission that by selling the shares, the assessee has violated section 11(1)(d) suffers from the basic fallacy in not recognizing that by selling the shares, the assessee merely converted one form of investment into another viz. money only. The assessee only realized the market value of shares and, therefore, we fail to appreciate how there was any violation of section 11(1)(d) particularly when the donor, while gifting the shares as corpus donation, never imposed any condition that the shares could not be sold. Only the form of asset was changed from share to cash but the original corpus donation remained as it is in the hands of trust - in favour of assessee.
|