Home Case Index All Cases Income Tax Income Tax + AT Income Tax - 2013 (8) TMI AT This
Forgot password New User/ Regiser ⇒ Register to get Live Demo
2013 (8) TMI 593 - AT - Income TaxPenalty u/s 271AAA of the Income Tax Act - Immunity - Penalty where search has been initiated - Penalty has been imposed only because of alleged non compliance with the provisions of section 271AAA(2)(iii) which stipulates the payment of tax alongwith interest in respect of the undisclosed income. The only issue is that the assessee was levied interest u/s 234B for short payment of advance tax due on the income return which in turn was caused by inaction on the part of the A.O. to adjust the seized cash towards advance tax liability as requested by the assessee – Held that:- While payment of taxes, along with interest, by the assessee is one of the conditions precedent for availing the immunity under section 271AAA(2), there is no time limit set out for such payments by the assessee. Once a time limit for payment of tax and interest has not been set out by the statute, it cannot indeed be open to the Assessing Officer to read such a time limit into the scheme of the Section or to infer one. There is thus no legally sustainable basis for the stand of the Assessing Officer that in a situation in which due tax and interest has not been paid in full before filing of the relevant income tax return, the assessee will not be eligible for immunity under section 271 AAA(2). Relying on the judgment in the case of CIT Vs Mahendra C Shah [2008 (2) TMI 32 - GUJARAT HIGH COURT], wherein it was held that Penalty provisions under section 271(1)(c) wherein Assessing Officer has to record the satisfaction in the course of assessment proceedings itself – something which is not a condition precedent for imposition of penalty under section 271 AAA - Outer limit has to be the point of time when the assessment proceedings are undertaken by the Assessing Officer because the opening portion of section 271(1) of the Act requires the Assessing Officer to record satisfaction in the course of such proceedings - Section 271 AAA, as the statute unambiguously provides, does not require any subjective satisfaction of the Asessing Officer to be arrived at during the assessment roceedings, and, therefore, the outer limit of payment before the conclusion of assessment proceedings will not come into play - On the facts of the present case wherein entire tax and interest has been duly adjusted out of seized cash or otherwise paid in deference to notices of demand, well before the penalty proceedings were concluded, the assessee could not be denied the immunity under section 271AAA(2) only because entire tax, along with interest, was not paid before filing of income tax return or, for that purpose, before concluding the assessment proceedings – Reliance is placed on the case DCIT vs. Pioneer Online Ltd in [2012 (5) TMI 6 - ITAT KOLKATA] – Decided in favor of Assessee.
|