In the first round of the proceedings under Section 179 of the said Act, the Commissioner of Income Tax by order dated 5th November, 2007 set aside the order dated 25th January, 2007 of the Income Tax Officer. However whist setting aside the order, the Commissioner of Income Tax directed the Income Tax officer that before any order under Section 179 of the said Act is passed against the petitioner, the Assessing Officer must give a specific finding to the effect that efforts made to recover the tax dues from the said company had failed and that the petitioner should be heard before any order is passed under Section 179 of the Income Tax Act.
Whether on facts and circumstances of the case and in law, the ITAT was justified in deleting the disallowance made of royalty paid by the respondent to CAMI USA for distribution of software products in India without appreciating that the royalty had been paid on the amount of bad debts even where the software had not worked at all?”
The Transferor Companies are in existence since 1975. It was felt that it would be in the interest of the Transferee Company to merge the five Transferor Companies with the Transferee Company, and to enable the Promoter thereof to hold shares directly in the Transferee Company rather than indirectly. The object of the Scheme is not to avoid any tax. Even today the shares are owned/controlled by the same Promoter albeit through the Transferor Companies. Under the Scheme the only difference is that the Promoter will now hold shares directly in the Transferee Company. It is correctly submitted by the Transferee Company that there is nothing illegal or unlawful or dubious or colourful in the Scheme and the same is a perfectly legitimate scheme and permissible by law.
In terms of the proviso to Section 147of the said Act the jurisdiction to reopen assessments already completed under Section 143(3) of the said Act, after the period of four years from the end of the relevant assessment year can only be exercised on the cumulative satisfaction of two conditions precedent as under: 1. There must be a reasonable belief on the part of the officer that income has escaped assessment; and 2. That there must be a failure on the part of the petitioner to fully and truly disclose all material facts necessary for assessment.
It appears that all facts were available on record and according to the respondents was only erroneously granted. This is a clear case of review of an order. The application of law or interpretation of a statue leading to a particular conclusion cannot lead to a conclusion that tax has escaped assessment for this would then certainly amount to review of an order which is not permitted unless so specified in a statue.
As per section 37C(l)(a), it was mandatory on the part of the Revenue to serve a copy of the order of Commissioner of Central Excise (Appeals) by registered post with acknowledgment due to the assessee. Admittedly in the present case, a copy of the order has not been sent by registered post. In these circumstances, it could not be said that the requirement of Section 37C has been complied with.
From the above circular, it would be clear that the amendment bringing self generated intangible assets such as trademark to capital gains tax only with effect from Assessments Year 2002-03 onwards. In this case, we are concerned with Assessment Year 1999-2000 and therefore, the amendment would not have any effect.
There was no fresh tangible material before the Assessing Officer to reach a reasonable belief that the income liable to tax has escaped assessment. The order passed originally on 29th March 2005 under Section 143(3) of the said Act was passed after the respondent had made adhoc claim for expenditure at 30% of the professional receipts in the revised return of income which was later withdrawn. In fact the reasons for reopening the assessment for the year 2002-03 itself records that the the claim of 30% adhoc expenses was withdrawn when the respondent assessee was asked to substantiate the claim.
It is an undisputed position that duty and penalty are arrears of the company. It was the company that was the person engaged in manufacture of goods and registered as manufacturer under section 6 of the said Act and therefore obliged to pay excise duty. Further under the Act and the Rules, the person liable to pay duty is the person who manufactures the goods in terms of rule 7 of the erstwhile Central Excise Rules, 1944 and rule 4 of the Central Excise Rules, 2002, as now existing. Therefore the obligation to pay duty is on the company.
Tribunal after examining the evidence upheld the order of CIT(A) and concluded that the respondent was an investor in shares and entitled to be taxed under the head capital gains in respect of purchase and sale of shares. The Tribunal after examining the facts found that the respondent had not borrowed any funds for its investments and that the long terms gains were attributable to only shares of 4 companies and 3 of them were held for a period of about 5 to 12 years. So far as short terms capital gains were concerned the Tribunal held that about 93% of the short terms gain/loss was attributable to shares of six companies and in any case all the shares were held for periods ranging in excess of 1 month.
