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2023 (4) TMI 291 - AT - Income TaxDeduction u/s 54F - investment in the purchase of new property - AO negatived the assessee’s claim as entire payment towards purchase of the new property was not made by the assessee alone. Other family members, i.e. her husband, his HUF and son of the assessee also made payments towards purchase of the new property - Whether assessee did not utilise the sale consideration of the old property towards purchase of the new property? - HELD THAT:- Where investment made by the assessee, although not entirely sourced from capital gain, but was within stipulated time and more than capital gain earned by him, the assessee was entitled to exemption under section 54F. The assessee brought on record evidence to show that the family members paid the amounts from their respective bank accounts to meet the cost of the new property purchased by the assessee. In Sunil Sachdeva’s case [2013 (10) TMI 746 - ITAT DELHI] held that section 54F does not require one to one co-relation between capital gain arising out of transfer of long term capital asset and utilisation thereof for purchase /construction of residential house. Therefore, the argument of the Ld. DR and objection of the Ld. AO that sale consideration obtained from the old property has not been utilised by the assessee has no legal basis and cannot be a hindrance to the assessee for claiming exemption under section 54F of the Act. Decided in favour of assessee. Surrendered income - Surrender by the son of the assessee during the course of survey - difference of stock and unexplained cash found during survey - Whether surrender was voluntary ? - Surrender was made on 30.05.2018 and the assessee retracted on 05.01.2021 - CIT-A deleted the addition - HELD THAT:- The difference of stock mentioned by the AO was only due to the fact that the approved valuer valued the stock on the basis of market price whereas the assessee had valued the closing stock as per accounting policy, namely cost or realisable value whichever is lower which method the assessee had followed year after year consistently. Since it is not a case where excess stock in quantity was found in survey, difference on account of valuation cannot form the basis of any addition. The assessee had produced before the Ld. AO all the bills which constituted the stock as on the date of survey which has not been considered and reliance was placed on the value adopted by the approved valuer as prevailing on the date of survey. This approach is not correct. CIT(A) considered the statement of the son of the assessee recorded during survey and noticed that he had explained that the shortage in cash and cash found at the time of survey was due to the fact that all the entries in the account books were not written up to date. To our mind, the delay in retraction by the assessee as pointed out by the Ld. AO cannot be of much significance when admittedly the assessee did not declare the surrendered amount in the return filed by her on 31.10.2018 just after a few months of the survey. This is also indicative of the fact that the surrender was not voluntary and with the consent of the assessee. The CBDT circulars mentioned by the Ld. CIT(A) his appellate order emphasise that there should be no coercion to admit undisclosed income and that admissions should be backed by credible evidence. Facts reveal that during survey, element of coercion cannot be ruled out and credible evidence to support the surrender was also lacking. We, therefore, concur with the findings of the Ld. CIT(A) and reject ground No. 2.
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