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1997 (8) TMI 46

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..... ationals and not professional receipts?" The Tribunal has opined that it was a factual finding of the Tribunal and no referable question of law arose more so in the light of the decision of the Supreme Court in P. Krishna Menon v. CIT [1959] 35 ITR 48. The facts in brief as emerging from the order of the Tribunal : The assessee is an astrologer, musician and palmist. During the assessment year 1989-90, he received an amount of Rs. 1,22,062 from five persons from abroad which according to the assessee were not for any professional services rendered but out of personal regard and admiration they held for him as a spiritual guru. He pointed out that his well wishers and friends had invited him abroad to visit them. He did so at their expen .....

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..... received out of admiration those donors had for him, the amounts were taxable. That the Department treated the receipts in India and abroad as of one and the same character, it was assumed that in foreign countries also the assessee rendered professional services but this was without any material, only a conjecture. In the absence of any evidence to show and from any material to suggest that these amounts were received for professional services rendered, these amounts cannot be brought to tax. It cannot be assumed that merely because the assessee had visited the foreign countries at the request of his well wishers and friends, he rendered professional services there. This fact is borne out by the affidavits filed by the donors. Each one of .....

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..... aid down by the Supreme Court in the cases referred to above and also by the Madras High Court in the cases referred to earlier." (emphasis supplied) The Tribunal has in its order referred to the decisions of the Supreme Court in Mahesh Anantrai Pattani v. CIT [1961] 41 ITR 481 and Parimisetti Seetharamamma v. CIT [1965] 57 ITR 532, as also to the decisions of the Madras High Court in CIT v. M. Balamuralikrishna [1988] 171 ITR 447, CIT v. S. A. Rajamanickam [1984] 149 ITR 85 and CIT v. Dr. B. M. Sundaravadanam [1984] 148 ITR 333. We have heard Mr. R. D. Jolly, the senior standing counsel assisted by Ms. Premlata Bansal, junior standing counsel for the Revenue, and Messrs. Salil Aggarwal and Pradeep Srivastava, advocates for the responde .....

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..... and the High Court must proceed on the basis of the facts found by the Tribunal. The High Court cannot afresh go into the facts overruling the facts found by the Tribunal unless there is a question to that effect challenging the facts found by the Tribunal. These propositions are well-settled and in this case in the decision of the High Court, these principles, in our opinion, have not been breached. It has been established that the assessee was carrying on a vocation, the vocation of preaching of Christian gospel and helping anti-atheism was the vocation of his life. He was running a newspaper in aid of that. The donations received from America were to help him for the said purpose. They arose out of his carrying on and continued so long a .....

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..... ons and, therefore, the gifts, were clearly the result of the teaching imparted by the appellant." The test laid down by their Lordships was that the imparting of the teaching being causa causans to the making of the gift it was not merely a causa sine qua non. The payments were repeated and came with the same regularity as the disciple's visits to the assessee for receiving instructions in Vedanta. It is clear that in both the cases treating of the income as arising from the vocation/occupation of the assessees respectively in the two cases was based on the facts found. Learned counsel for the assessee has relied on the Supreme Court decision in Gauri Prasad Bagaria v. CIT [1961] 42 ITR 112 and a Division Bench decision of the Delhi .....

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