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2021 (3) TMI 892 - HC - Income TaxNotice under Section 153C against deceased person - liability of legal heir of late assessee - HELD THAT:- It is not in dispute that the legal heir of late Bhupendrabhai Desai had not participated in the proceedings. All that the legal heir of late Bhupendrabhai Desai did was to inform the Assessing Officer about the death of his father and requested to drop the proceedings. It is true that although the father passed away in the year 2017, yet the legal heir did not inform the department upto October 2019. However, at the same time, we should not overlook the fact that even after coming to know about the demise of late Bhupendrabhai, the department could have issued a valid notice to the legal heir as the period of limitation of 21 months had not expired. We fail to understand what prevented the department from issuing a valid notice to the legal heir within the prescribed time period. We may refer to a recent pronouncement of the Supreme Court in the case of Principal Commissioner of Income Tax, New Delhi vs. Maruti Suzuki India Limited,[2019 (7) TMI 1449 - SUPREME COURT] as held during the pendency of the assessment proceedings if the assessee company gets amalgamated with another company, it would lose its existence and the assessment order passed subsequently in the name of the said non-existing entity would be without jurisdiction and liable to be set-aside. In the facts of the case before the Supreme Court, although the Assessing Officer was informed of the amalgamated company having ceased to exist as a result of the approved scheme of amalgamation, yet the jurisdictional notice was issued only in its name. The Supreme Court took the view that the basis on which the jurisdiction was invoked was fundamentally at odds with the legal principle that the amalgamating entity ceases to exist upon the approved scheme of amalgamation. The only proposition of law that is applicable in the present litigation is that a notice, be it under Section 148 of the Act or Section 153C of the Act, issued to a dead person, is unenforceable in law. If such is the legal position, the Revenue cannot contend that as they had no knowledge about the death of the assessee, they are entitled to plead that the notice is not defective. The Supreme Court, in a plethora of judgments, has taken the view that if the person sought to be taxed comes within the letter of the law, he must be taxed, however great the hardship may appear to the judicial mind to be. On the other hand, if the State, seeking to recover the tax, cannot bring the citizen within the letter of the law, the citizen is free, however, apparently within the spirit of law the case might otherwise appear to be. We are left with no other option but to allow the present writ-application and hold that the impugned notice being invalid, the further proceedings pursuant thereto are not tenable in law.
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