The petitioner prays that the notification should be quashed in so far as it seeks to subject the activities of a business chit fund companies to service tax to the extent of 70% of the consideration received for the services. The contention of the petitioner is that there is no question of exempting a part of the consideration received for the services in chit fund business when the law provides that such services are not taxable at all in the first place.
Whether Services in relation to erection, commissioning and installation of storage tank for storage of imported inputs/ammonia outside factory are eligible as input services?
As it appears from the portion highlighted by us, the question involved in that matter regarding the validity of the State Laws included in the Ninth Schedule cannot have any application to the facts of the present case. Regarding constituent power under Article 368, we have already relied upon the observations of the nine-bench-judgment of the Supreme Court in the case of I.R. Coelho [dead] by L.Rs. v. State of T.N. (supra) holding that by addition of the words ‘constituent power’ in Article 368, the amending body, namely, Parliament does not become the original Constituent Assembly. We, thus, find that the above decision relied upon by Mr. Champaneri does not help his client in any way.
The law seems to be well settled that unless and until there is some other evidence to indicate that extra consideration had flowed in the transaction of purchase of property, the report of the DVO cannot form the basis of any addition on the part of the revenue. In the present case there is no evidence other than the report of the DVO and, therefore, the same cannot be relied upon for making an addition. In these circumstances, the question which has been framed is decided in favour of the assessee and against the revenue. The appeal is dismissed.
At the outset, it is clear that as it is in the judgment of the Division Bench, which arose almost under similar circumstances, wherein the learned judge has abruptly dismissed the application for injunction on the ground that the company court has no jurisdiction to pass an interlocutory order or injunction or direction, except to safeguard the interest of the creditors.
On a query put by the Court, learned counsel for the assessee accepts if the recourse to Section 143(3) would have been barred by time, there would have been no restriction to initiate the re-assessment proceeding under Section 147 of the Act. We may add that there is nothing on the plain language of Section 143 of the Act which may suggest that the recourse to Section 147 can be had only when the period of limitation to complete assessment proceeding has expired or the Assessing Authority should wait for the expiry of the said period. The said argument is ridiculous and not acceptable.
Since the present case did not suffer from non-disclosure or omission to disclose ‘fully and truly’ the facts by the assessee, the Assessing Officer could not have been held, and was rightly not held by the learned Tribunal, to have had the jurisdiction to re-open the assessment and make assessment as in the present case.In the present case all the material facts, which were necessary for making a correct assessment, had been furnished, in the case at hand, to the Assessing Officer and when the Assessing Officer had failed to make correct assessment, the Revenue cannot blame the assessee and take recourse to the proviso to Section 147 for the purpose of re-opening the assessment.
It is an admitted position that no notice under Section 143(2) had been issued while making assessment under Section 143(3) read with Section 147. The Apex Court in the case of National Thermal Power Co. Ltd. v. CIT [1998] 229 ITR 383 has held that the Tribunal has discretion to allow or not to allow a new ground to be raised. But in a case where the Tribunal is only required to consider the question of law arising from facts which are on record in the assessment proceedings, there is no reason why such a question should not be allowed to be raised when it is necessary to consider that question in order to correctly assess the tax liability of an assessee.
In case of Ashok Taksali (supra), the Rajasthan High Court came across a similar question. The Bench was of the opinion that once a salary income of the block year has been taxed and such tax has been deducted at source, there is no question of holding that the income of the assessee was undisclosed income of the block period. It was observed as under:-
Firstly, the petitioners had lodged their refund claims at the relevant time itself way back in the year 1991 when the question of classification was decided in their favour by the Commissioner. Secondly, the Department did not release the refund for a considerable period of time since such order of the Commissioner (Appeals) was challenged before the Tribunal. Thirdly, the Commissioner (Appeals) disposed of the petitioners’ case on 11-10-2002 with respect to the refund and not with respect to the original claim of classification.
