A Division bench of the Bombay High Court has held that the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of certain provisions) Act, 2020 is not applicable for FY 2014-15.
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 noticed the legal question of law among others as “Whether TOLA is applicable for Assessment Year 2015-2016 and whether any notice issued under Section 148 of the Act after 31st March 2021 will travel back to the original date?” and answered in the negative.
The bench noted that, “This Court in Tata Communications Transformation Services Ltd. (Supra) as well as in Siemens Financial Services (P.) Ltd. (Supra) has also rejected the argument of Revenue on the issue of travel back.”
It was thus observed that, “Therefore, there is no question of Revenue relying on TOLA to justify the impugned notice under Section 148 of the Act as being within the period of limitation”, placing reliance on a categorical finding in Tata Communications Transformation Services Ltd and has been followed by the Siemens Financial Services (P.) Ltd.
It was also added that, “Even in New India Assurance, the Court held that reliance by Revenue on Instruction No.1 of 2022 issued by CBDT is grossly misplaced and neither the provisions of TOLA nor the judgment in Ashish Agarwal provide that any notice issued under Section 148 of the Act after 31st March 2021 will travel back to the original date.”
In result, it was held that, TOLA is not applicable for Assessment Year 2015-2016 and any notice issued under Section 148 of the Act after 31st March 2021 will not travel back to the original date.
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