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2018 (8) TMI 2087 - AT - Income TaxBest judgment Assessment u/s. 144 - assessee could not comply with the requisitions specified in the notices u/s. 142(1) issued from time to time - HELD THAT:- The burden to prove its’ return, and the claims preferred thereby, is on the assessee. The assessee’s insistence, therefore, on the Revenue to provide him with the copies of the documents he required for making compliance, is thus wholly inappropriate, particularly considering that it is not the Revenue (Income-tax) but the Customs Department that had seized the documents. Equally invalid is the plea of an inability to provide the documents/information in view of the books of account having been seized or taken away by the Customs Department, which continued to be made by the assessee before the AO even as late as 14/12/201. It was incumbent on the assessee to have moved the Customs Department for the said documents, which has not been shown. AO provided the same to the assessee on 19/12/2011, i.e., after obtaining the same from the Customs Department. While the AO indeed acted proactively in doing so, he ought to have, in the interest of the assessment, or should we say proper assessment, acted earlier in requisitioning the same from the Customs Department. The idea or the purpose of the foregoing is not to apportion the blame, which no doubt lies substantially at the door of the assessee inasmuch as it is he who has to make the compliances in discharge of his statutory duties, but, rather, to emphasize that the same is both futile as well as facile inasmuch as the assessment, as made, cannot be approved of. Under the circumstances, we only consider it proper that the matter, setting aside the impugned order, is restored back to the file of the AO for adjudication afresh in accordance with law after allowing the assessee a reasonable opportunity to state his case with reference to the various queries raised or that maybe raised in the said set aside proceedings.
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