The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), Chennai bench comprising Shri Mahavir Singh, Vice President and Shri Manoj Kumar Aggarwal, Accountant Member has condoned the delay in filing of audit report after the income tax return due date because of virus attack in the system.
erred in not considering the few hours delay in filing Form No.10B after filing the income-tax return due to genuine hardship, unintentional and beyond the control of the assessee.
the assessee is a registered trust and filed its return of income for the assessment year 2018-19 on 11.10.2018 at 21.01 hours. i.e., 9.01 p.m. and due to malfunctioning / virus attack as claimed by the assessee, in the computer system, the IT return could not be e-verified on the same day. The assessee claimed that after repairing / servicing the computer system, the assessee could file the Form No.10B the very next day i.e., 12.10.2018 at 1.10 p.m. and also e-verified its return of income on the very same day i.e., 12.10.2018 at 12.02 p.m.
The assessee has filed acknowledgement depicting the time of filing of ITR as well as Form No.10B.
A division bench of the Tribunal has observed that both the return of income as well as Form No.10B were filed well before due date and there is no intentional delay in filing Form No.10B after filing the return of income.
‘wThe delay is of few hours in filing Form No.10B and that is due to malfunctioning / virus attack as claimed by the assessee in computer system, which is beyond the control of the assessee. We do not agree with the findings of the CIT(A) that simply delay of few hours cannot be condoned and the entire contribution received by assessee’s trust was accordingly considered as income without taking into account the amount spent towards charity and raise a tax demand of Rs.2,27,420/-,” The Tribunal said.
“The above circular states that CIT(A) has power for condoning belated application in filing Form No.10B wherever the assessee was prevented by reasonable cause for filing of such applications within the stipulated time. In the present case before us, the delay is for few hours which could be condoned as there is a reason that there is malfunctioning / virus attack in the computer system and consequent data loss which is beyond the control of the assessee. Hence, we reverse the orders of lower authorities and direct the AOto accept the audit report in Form No.10B as filed within the time and the delay is condoned,” the Tribunal concluded.
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