No Addition against Individual Member If It is agreed that the Gold belongs to Whole Family: ITAT

The Jaipur bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) has held that the addition cannot be made against an individual member of the family agrees that the gold in possession belongs to them.

The income tax department seized gold and silver worth 37 lakhs during a search conducted on the premises of the assessee. Subsequently, the addition was made against the assessee.

Before the Tribunal the assessee contended that the gold & silver ornaments, jewellery and coins all were found from the locker of Smt. Savitri Devi, mother of the assessee. Therefore, the impugned addition cannot be made in the hands of the assessee without any valid reason particularly when she is a separate assessee. It was further contended that the CBDT circular No. 1916 dated 11-05-1994 recognizes the habit of possessing gold in the Indian society, therefore, some amount of silver ornament is always kept by the Indian families and once the family members have already affirmed through the possession of the silver ornaments and coins, the authorities below must have accepted the same.

The Tribunal, while concluding the matter in favour of the assessee allowed the above contentions and observed that the silver jewellery so found belongs to all the family members as stated by the assessee in his statement recorded u/s 132(4) of the Act.

“A fact, which seems to have been accepted by the AO, where he has given the credit of silver coins belonging to Rajaram Ladha and Savitri Ladha as well as silver utensils belonging to Savitri Ladha and also fairly accepted by the ld CIT(A) where she has accepted the assessee’s explanation regarding gold jewellery so found during the course of the search along with silver jewellery/items. Therefore, once it is accepted that these items belong to all family members and where the assessee has thereafter given specific details regarding such items identified to each of the individual members as per his submissions dated 18.08.2017, the remaining items should, therefore, be accepted as belonging to respective family members and not just that of the assessee only,” the Tribunal said.