TMI Blog1952 (10) TMI 53X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... at Kanpur and at Calcutta can be legally allowed as business expenses of the year under consideration? 2. Learned counsel for the parties are agreed that the second question does not arise out of the appellate order of the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal and it is, therefore, not necessary to answer that question. 3. The assessee is a firm carrying on business in cloth, money-lending and commission agency etc. with its head office at Mirzapur and its branches at Kanpur and Calcutta. A long time ago, the assessee had advanced a sum of ₹ 67,186/- to Jagannath Bagla, his uncle (his father's sister's husband). In the year of account, the assessee wrote off this sum from his account books and, in his return, he showed it as a ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... me year, the assessee stopped calculating interest on the amount advanced, and in Sambat 1990 and thereafter, no interest was added to the amount which had been advanced. It was further proved that no attempt had been made to realise the amount after Sambat 1990 and no reason has been given why no such attempt was made. There are no materials on the record from which it could be deduced that the assessee had any hope of realising any part of this debt. From all these facts, the Tribunal came to the conclusion that the amount had become irrecoverable, at least, in Sambat 1990 if not earlier and the assessee was not entitled to claim the amount as a bad debt in the account year in question. 6. Learned counsel has urged that if the assessee ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... (A) decided the point and in the light of that decision the amendment appears to us to have been made to provide statutory authority for what their Lordships had laid down in that case. In that case, the Judicial Commissioners had held that the assessee was the sole person to decide whether a debt was bad and when it became bad. Their decision was based on the following reasonings: The assessee must, for obvious reasons, be the sole arbiter of his own rights and privileges as regards the business he conducts in his own interests. What is to his interest, and what is prejudicial to him, must depend upon his own decision. It therefore follows that on the question whether to treat any particular debt as bad or irrecoverable, his word or d ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... o be decided on the materials placed before the Tribunal. The Tribunal had before it several circumstances which we have quoted above and, as against them, it had the fact that the assessee had continued to carry over and bring forward the amount of debt in his account books year after year and in Sambat 1993 got an acknowledgment to extend the period of limitation. On a consideration of all the facts and circumstances the Tribunal came to the conclusion that the debt had become irrecoverable in Sambat 1990. It is not for us to consider whether, on the same facts, we would have come to the same or to a different conclusion. All that we are entitled to see is whether there was material on which the Tribunal could come to the conclusion arriv ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
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