The Mumbai bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal ( ITAT ) has directed re-adjudication, stating that either Form 26AS or Form 16 is essential for claiming Tax Deducted at Source ( TDS ) credit.
The Assessee also claimed TDS amounting to Rs.10,45,439/- was deducted by employer i.e. M/s. Nirmal Lifestyle Ltd. from salary under Section 192 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, which was not allowed by the Assessing Officer ( AO ) mainly on the ground that the employer of the assessee has not reflected the TDS in Form No.26AS.
The Assessee mainly claimed that the employer of Assessee in fact, did not provide Form No.16. The Assessee further claimed that employer of the Assessee is also a regular defaulter and in another incidence/case of another employee has also not deposited the TDS amount deducted under Section 192 of the Income Tax Act, which resulted into filing a case which went up to the Bench of the Tribunal at Pune and in the case of Chandrashekhar Sadashiv Potphode v. DCIT in the Tribunal granted the relief by allowing the TDS credit mainly on the reason that the only option to the Revenue is to recover the TDS amount not deposited by the employer who has deducted TDS and not from the Assessee as per provisions of Section 205 of the Income Tax Act.
The two member bench of the tribunal comprising S. Rifafur Rahman ( Accountant member ) and Narendar Kumar Choudhry ( Judicial member ) observed that the assessee by filing TDS working which is though initialed by somebody but the same is neither on proper letter head nor there is a name of the person who signed such document and even otherwise, the assessee has also failed to file any document, wherefrom it can be reflected that the Assessee has received any particular amount of salary on which TDS has been deducted and therefore, in absence of relevant documents, the Commissioner correctly held that the AO has not made any mistake in non-granting of credit of TDS, since, the assessee did not furnish any salary slip or Form No.16.
Further observed that in absence of relevant documents, the issue remained to be adjudicated properly and in its right perspective and therefore, for proper and just decision of the case and for the end of the justice, we deem it appropriate to remand the instant case to the file of the Commissioner for decision afresh on the issue under consideration by giving reasonable opportunity to the Assessee to produce the relevant documents, such as appointment letter, salary slips or Form No.16 or bank statements or any other corroborative evidence/documents to substantiate its claim. Accordingly, the appeal of the Assessee stands allowed for statistical purposes.
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