Case Law Details
Savita Kapila, Legal Heir of Late Shri Mohinder Paul Kapila Vs ACIT (Delhi High Court)
There Is No Statutory Requirement Imposing An Obligation Upon Legal Heirs To Intimate The Death Of The Assessee.
In the absence of a statutory provision it is difficult to cast a duty upon the legal representatives to intimate the factum of death of an assessee to the income tax department. After all, there may be cases where the legal representatives are estranged from the deceased assessee or the deceased assessee may have bequeathed his entire wealth to a charity. Consequently, whether PAN record was updated or not or whether the Department was made aware by the legal representatives or not is irrelevant.
Issuance of notice upon a dead person and non-service of notice does not come under the ambit of mistake, defect or omission. Consequently, Section 292B of the Act, 1961 does not apply to the present case. Legal heirs are under no statutory obligation to intimate the death of the assessee to the revenue.
Section 292BB of the Act, 1961 is applicable to an assessee and not to a legal representative. Further, in the present case one of the legal heirs of the deceased assessee, i .e. the petitioner, had neither cooperated in the assessment proceedings nor filed return or waived the requirement of Section 148 of the Act, 1961 or submitted to jurisdiction of the Assessing Officer. She had merely uploaded the death certificate of the deceased assessee.
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