A Division bench of the Bombay High Court has held that notice issued without DIN for reopening of assessment under Section 148 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 is invalid.
A Document Identification Number (DIN) is a unique identification number assigned to documents issued by the income tax authority in India, used to track and authenticate various communications, including notices, orders, and letters.
The petitioner is engaged in information technology consulting, software development and business process services. Respondent no.1 is the Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax and Jurisdictional Assessing Officer (JAO), who issued the impugned notice of reassessment to the petitioner.
The Bench of Justices Dr Neela Gokhale and Justice K R Shriram reckoned the issue “Whether the impugned notice dated 27th August 2022 is invalid and bad in law as the same has been issued without a DIN.”
The Bench observed that, admittedly there is no DIN mentioned. It is the petitioner’s case that the notice is invalid and bad in law in view of the Circular No.19 of 2019 dated 14th August 2019 issued by CBDT.” A separate intimation letter also dated 27th August 2022 was issued to the petitioner with a valid Document Identification Number.
It was also observed that, “We agree with petitioner that this letter cannot validate the notice issued under Section 148 of the Act on 27th August 2022. The reason is firstly, the intimation letter refers to a DIN with respect to some notice under Section 148 of the Act dated 26th August 2022.”
It was further noted that, “The impugned notice issued to petitioner is dated 27th August 2022 and not 26th August 2022 for which the DIN is generated. Secondly, the procedure prescribed in Circular No.19 of 2019 dated 14th August 2019 for non-mention of DIN in case letter/notice/order has not been complied with by respondent no.1. It is settled that if DIN is not mentioned in the letter/notice/order, the reason for not mentioning the DIN and the approval from specified authority for issuing such letter/notice/ order without DIN has to be obtained and mentioned in such letter/notice/order.”
It was thus held that, “In the present case, in the impugned notice dated 27th August 2022, no such reference is there. Therefore, as held in Ashok Commercial Enterprises (Supra) and Tata Medical Center Trust (Supra), the impugned notice is clearly invalid and bad in law.”
In result, the question of law as to whether the impugned notice dated 27th August 2022 is invalid and bad in law as the same has been issued without a DIN was answered in favour of the assessee-petitioner.
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