The Ahmedabad bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) held that the consultant’s failure to comply with the notice of the Commissioner of Income Tax (CIT) Exemptions won’t result in non-registration of the trust under Section 12A of the Income Tax Act, 1961 and hence condones delay of 671 days.
The assessee is a trust running a blood bank and the activity of the assessee falls within the definition of charitable purposes since it has to be considered as providing medical relief with the object of providing general public utility.
The appeal is time-barred by 671 days. The counsel for the assessee has filed an application for condonation of delay, in which it was submitted that if one were to exclude the Covid pandemic period, then the effective delay is only 226 days.
The counsel for the assessee submitted that it was purely owing to the omission on the part of the consultant of the assessee trust, that the application for approval for grant of registration was rejected for the impugned Assessment Year since the consultant did not file the requisite documents before the CIT-Exemptions.
The genuineness of the activities of the assessee trust is also supported by the fact that in the subsequent years, the CIT-Exemptions has granted approval under Section 12A of the Act to the assessee trust.
It was submitted that if given an opportunity the assessee shall furnish all requisite documents before the CIT-Exemptions so as to enable him to grant the necessary registration under Section 12A of the Income Tax Act, to which the assessee is legally entitled to, looking into the activities carried out by the assessee trust.
The Two-member bench comprising of Waseem Ahmed (Accountant member) and Siddhartha Nautiyal (Judicial member) held that in the interest of justice, the matter is being restored to the file of CIT-Exemptions for de novo consideration after giving due opportunity of hearing to the assessee.
Thus, the appeal of the assessee was allowed for statistical purposes.
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