Case Law Details
ACIT Vs Assam Kerala Roadways Pvt. Ltd. (ITAT Kolkata)
Assessee is a goods carrier /transporter operating huge fleet of good carriers by hiring from the market during the year and during the year it had incurred expenditure of Rs. 34,11,35,804/- under the head lorry hire charges. The assessee has furnished complete details comprising challan no, truck no, load from destination and lorry hire amount etc. in respect of 9068 vehicles before the AO . The AO test checked some of the vehicles on this web portal VAHAN, Ministry of Road, Transport & Highways and came to the conclusion that some of these vehicles were either maxi cab, or motor cycle or tractor and finally disallowed a sum of Rs. 4,09,36,296/- @ 12% of the entire lorry hire expenses.
The Ld. CIT(A) allowed the appeal of the assessee by passing a detailed and speaking order by holding that all the vehicles as test checked by the AO were duly registered as goods carriers on the web portal of VAHAN, Ministry of Road Transport & highways and in couple of cases the data were not available due to non-digitization of data.
The Ld. CIT(A) examined the expenses claimed by the assessee comprising bills, vouchers and came to the conclusion that the order passed by the AO is just on extrapolation and on presumption basis without any verification of details/information as filed by the assessee.
The Ld. CIT(A) has given some example of vehicles registration status on VAHAN portal which duly explained the nature of the vehicles. We have examined the same and found no infirmity or any deficiency in the observations of Ld. CIT(A). Moreover we find merit in the contention of the Ld. Counsel for the assessee that the addition has been made as unexplained expenditure u/s 69C of the Act which is incorrect and against the provision of Act as the said explanation deals with the disallowance and addition of expenditure the source whereof is not explained by the assessee.
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