American Express Banking Corp. (India Branch) Vs DCIT (Delhi High Court)
The Delhi High Court considered an application filed under Section 151 of the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 seeking permission to place additional documents (Annexure V) on record and a stay on all subsequent steps. The Court took the draft assessment order dated 29.06.2026 on record. Referring to its interim order dated 29.05.2026, by which it had permitted the Assessing Officer to pass the draft assessment order while directing that it should not be given effect to, the Court ordered that the effect and operation of the order dated 29.06.2026 shall remain stayed. The application was accordingly disposed of.
In the appeal, the High Court admitted the matter on multiple questions of law relating to transfer pricing. The admitted questions include whether the Tribunal erred in sustaining the Transfer Pricing Officer’s substitution of the transfer pricing methodology without explicitly rejecting the appellant’s methodology; remanding the matter to the TPO instead of deciding the validity of the transfer pricing adjustment; treating the issues as similar to Assessment Year 2009-10 despite alleged differences; upholding the remand despite the accepted comparable company having incurred losses while the appellant’s credit card business remained profitable; not rejecting the transfer pricing adjustment allegedly based on the Bright Line Test; rejecting foreign associated enterprises as tested parties and foreign comparable companies; relying on the Bright Line Test though labelled as CUP in the absence of a prescribed benchmarking methodology; and not excluding services received from Indian entities from the transfer pricing adjustment pool. Notice was issued to the respondent, whose counsel accepted notice, and the matter was listed for hearing on 29.10.2026.
