The Ahmedabad bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) has held that the income tax department cannot treat the same income received as sale consideration from the same property by co-owners differently for the purpose of imposing tax under the Income Tax Act, 1961.
The assessee challenged the revisional order passed by the Principal Commissioner contending that different treatment was given to the other two co-owners namely Smt. Hiraben Shantilal and Smt. Indiraben Shantilal cases. Therefore, the assessing officer has not invoked Section 50C of the Act and accepted the returned income filed by the assessee.
A bench of Shri Waseem Ahmed, Accountant Member And Shri T.R. Senthil Kumar, Judicial Member held that “it is seen from the sale deed executed on 30.05.2011, the entire consideration were being made through cheque payments. However, as it can been seen from the other co-owners assessment orders, the Income Tax Department has accepted the returned income filed by the respective assessee and has not adopted section 50C valuation for the other co-owners namely Smt. Hiraben Shantilal and Smt. Indiraben Shantilal as can been seen from the reassessment orders passed u/s. 143(3) r.w.s. 147 dated 30.12.2019. There cannot be two different yardsticks for the same set of sale transaction made by five co-owners.”
Deleting the order, the Tribunal held that “following the above judicial precedents, we have no hesitation in holding that different treatments cannot be given on the same set of facts in respect of different co-owners of a common piece of land which are subjected to capital gains. If such action on the part of Revision Authority is approved, it would militate against the principle of equality of law as enshrined in the Article 14 of the Constitution of India. Further, it is seen that the ld.CIT has not taken any steps for reopening the case of other co-owners viz. Smt. Hiraben Shantilal and Smt. Indiraben Shantilal and thereby accepted similar long term capital gain and on the said transaction. Therefore, in our considered view, the assessee cannot be treated differently for similar transaction.”
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