Mumbai Income-tax Appellate Tribunal in the case of Devendra Motilal Kothari v. DCIT , has held that fees for portfolio management services are not inextricably linked with the particular instance of purchase and sale of shares and hence cannot be allowed as a deduction while computing capital gains.
Lucknow Income-tax Appellate Tribunal in the case of Sanjiv Gupta v. DCIT , held that Circular No. 7 of 2009 dated 22 October, 2009 withdrawing the Circular No. 23 of 1969 dated 23 July, 1969 would be effective only prospectively from 22 October, 2009. The Circulars are briefly explained in the following table.
Assessing Officer’s stand that ‘provision of computation of income under Section 11′ does not contain any provision which may entitle an assessee to claim weighted deduction for any expenses incurred’ is not acceptable as Section 11 provides that the income of the Trust is to be computed on commercial basis i.e. as per normal accounting principles. Normal Accounting Principles clearly provide for deducting depreciation to arrive at income. Income so arrived at (after deducting depreciation) is to be applied for charitable purpose.
Delhi bench of the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal (the Tribunal) in the case of Intelsat Corporation (ITA No. 5443/D/2010) (Judgment Date: 4 March 2011, Assessment Year: 2007-08) held that income received by the non-resident taxpayer from leasing of transponder capacity and bandwidth cannot be taxed as ‘royalty’ under the provisions of Income-tax Act, 1961 (the Act).
Recently, the Mumbai bench of the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal (the Tribunal), in the case of Bharat Bijlee Limited v. ACIT (ITA NO. 6410/MUM/2008) (Judgment Date: 11 March 2011, Assessment Year: 2005-06) , held that where a business undertaking is transferred against issue of bonds / shares, the transaction is not a “Slump Sale” as defined under Section 2(42C) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (the Act) and therefore provisions of section 50B of the Act relating to computation of capital gains in case of Slump Sale are not applicable to such transfer.
Mumbai bench of the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal (the Tribunal) in the case of ITO v. TCFC Finance Limited (ITA No.1299/Mum/2009) (Judgement date- 9 March 2011 Assessment Year 2004-05) held that the provisions of Minimum Alternate Tax (MAT) deals with amount of provision for diminution in the value of any asset and not with the value of asset which remains after diminution. Once provision is made for diminution in the value of any asset, the same has to be added for computing book profit, regardless of the fact whether or not any balance value of the asset remains after diminution.
In the case of Synergies Casting Ltd. v. DCIT it was held that exemption under Section 10B of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (the Act) is not available to an undertaking taken over on lease. Further, the Tribunal held that in order to get the benefit of Section 10B of the Act, for the unexpired period, the taxpayer must prove that it is a successor to the predecessor company. Since the taxpayer was only a lessee it was not a successor to the lessor.
As per clause (a) of Rule 49, an ‘authorized income-tax practitioner’ is any authorized representative as defined in clause (v) or clause (vi) or clause (vii) of sub-section (2) of section 288 for appearing before this Tribunal.
In the present case, we are of the opinion that even if the websites had materialized, the expenditure could not have been viewed as capital expenditure because the website is put up for the purposes of day-to-day running of the business and even if one were to view that some enduring benefit is obtained by the assessee, the benefit cannot be said to accrue to the assessee in the capital field. A website is something where full information about the assessee’s business is given and it helps the assessee’s customers in dealing with it. A website constantly needs updating, otherwise it may become obsolete. It helps in the smooth and efficient running of the day-to-day business. The expenditure would have been allowable as revenue expenditure; as a corollary, when the website did not materialize, the amounts advanced to the companies who were engaged to develop the websites, when they became irrecoverable, can be written off and claimed as loss incidental to the business. The loss is thus allowable as business loss in terms of section 28 of the Act. We accordingly uphold the assessee’s alternative plea.
Section 91 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 allows credit for Federal & State taxes, the DTAA allows credit only for Federal taxes. The result is that the Section 91 is more beneficial to the assessee & by virtue of Section 90(2) it must prevail over the DTAA. Though Section 91 applies only to a case where there is no DTAA, a literal interpretation will result in a situation where an assessee will be worse off as a result of the provisions of the DTAA which is not permissible under the Act. Section 91 must consequently be treated as general in application and must prevail where the DTAA is not more beneficial to the assessee. Accordingly, even an assessee covered by the scope of the DTAA will be eligible for credit of State taxes u/s 91 despite the DTAA not providing for the same.
