The Bombay High Court has recently quashed and set aside the impugned assessment order passed by the revenue authority as per the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, being delayed for more than 9 months from the date of receipt of order and in violation of the Section 153(3) of the Income Tax Act, 1961, further directing revenue to refund tax paid along with the jewellery seized.
The ITAT, on appeal of the petitioner, had partly allowed the appeal citing violations of principles of natural justice on the ground that the petitioner ought to have been allowed to cross examine the statement made by the bank manager or rebut the claims made by him with evidence.
A miscellaneous application was also filed by the petitioner before the ITAT to bring on record certain facts that purportedly were recorded incorrectly inadvertently in the order dated 18th February 2010 that came to be dismissed in July 2011.
On 6th March 2018, the petitioner addressed a letter to the respondent, to bring on record the fact that since the AO had not acted upon the order dated 18th February 2010 passed by the ITAT by which the matter was remanded back, as per Section 153(3) of the Act the time limit for completion of such assessment proceedings viz. nine months.
The period of nine months had elapsed and consequently the respondent was called upon to refund Rs.7,39,083/- the tax paid with applicable interest totaling to Rs.14,33,821/-.
The counsel for the petitioner, Sham Walve submitted that the petitioner has not received any response to the two follow up emails dated 14th February 2022 and 18th April 2022 to the 10th January 2022 email addressed to the Principal CCIT, Revenue Secretary and the Chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT).
On the contrary, the revenue representative, Ajeet Manwani submitted that the section envisages ‘receipt of the order’ by the Principal Chief Commissioner or such other person as mentioned in the section for limitation to commence. In this case, the Tribunal had not sent the order to the respondent-revenue.
The Division Bench of Justices Kamal Khata and Dhiraj Kumar Thakur observed that, “the respondents who were party to the proceedings could have requested for a copy of the order from the ITAT at least a month after the order was passed”.
Thus, the revenue was directed to release the seized jewellery and refund the paid income tax, with consequential interest under Section 244A of the Income Tax Act, to the petitioners within two weeks from the receipt of the order.
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