The Hyderabad Bench of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal ( ITAT ) has refused to condone the huge delay of 3047 days based on vague reasons and on the ground of absence of reasonable cause for filing delay in filing appeal.
The assesseeViswabharati was a Mutually Aided Co-operative Society Limited engaged in providing credit facilities and accepting deposits from members only. For the Assessment year 2010-11, the assessee society filed a return of income declaring a loss on 24/09/2011 and a Revised return declaring a loss on the same date. As per the statements of facts, assessee filed return of income for Assessment Year 2017-18 seeking set off carry forward losses for earlier years.
However, the same was denied. Thereafter, for A.Y. 2017-18, assessee filed rectification application on 12.01.2019 seeking the same relief of set off of carry forward losses of the earlier years from A.Ys. 2010-11, 2011-12 and 2013-14 to 2015-16, the same was also denied by the CPC. Thereafter, the assessee had filed an appeal before the Commissioner of Income Tax (CIT(A)) after a delay of 3047 days on 29.07.2019. As the appeal of the assessee was time barred for a period of 3047 days, CIT(A) / NFAC dismissed the appeal of assessee
K.C. Devdas, on behalf of the assessee submitted that the assessee had failed to appear due to ill-health being chronic diabetic and heart patient and due to frequent visits to hospital and not on account of any lapse by the officers of assessee society.
Kumar Adithya appeared on behalf of the revenue.
The Division Bench of RamaKanta Panda,(Accountant Member) and Laliet Kumar, (Judicial Member) dismissed the appeal observing that, the medical treatment of the director of assessee society, was only related to eye, cough, cardiovascular. For such diseases, it could not be said that the assessee society was prevented from filing the statutory appeal before the CIT(A). No evidence had been filled out showing that the director of the assessee was hospitalised for more than 6-7 years.
“Moreover, the assessee had been regularly filing the return of income within the statutory periods, without any failure and assessee being the society can always authorize some other official of the society either president, secretary or joint secretary to file the appeal before the CIT(A),” the Bench further observed.
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