Home Case Index All Cases Income Tax Income Tax + HC Income Tax - 2016 (12) TMI HC This
Forgot password New User/ Regiser ⇒ Register to get Live Demo
2016 (12) TMI 1200 - DELHI HIGH COURTReopening of assessment - Addition on Interest on bank accounts in UK and loan given - Held that:- No doubt, the letters received from the UK authorities were sufficient to trigger a reassessment proceedings but exactly that is where the Revenue, in our opinion, faltered. Having received information, it could well have proceeded through a reassessment proceeding at the earliest opportunity, i.e. in October 1989 or latest by December of that year, the revenue chose to wait for three years and sought to reopen at least a decade-late completed assessment. By then the assessee had died. There are certainly pointers to interesting omissions and in any event, leads that could have been developed by the AO, such as queries to the Bank of India, for foreign inward remittances and their source. If the assessee were alive, upon receipt of such information, he might well have been confronted with them. The lack of any probe in this regard and almost exclusive reliance upon the UK revenue information, in our opinion, was not sufficient to conclude that the amount which was attributed to the deceased assessee, i.e. UK £2 million in fact belonged to him. In fact, the materials show that these amounts were brought to tax in the hands of Sh. Kumar. Rather than accepting what ought to be the correct standard, this Court is of the opinion that the tax authorities did not do what they could have and had not done what they should have when they did get information in September 1989 and woke-up far too late. For these reasons, we are of the opinion that the question of law framed should be answered against the revenue and in favor of the assessee.
|