Payment of club membership fees for employees allowable as business expenditure

ICICI Bank Ltd Vs DCIT (ITAT Mumbai)

ITAT Mumbai held that club membership fees for employees are to be treated as business expenditure of a company under section 37 of the Income Tax Act.

Facts-

The assessee is engaged in the business of banking and related activities. The case was selected for scrutiny and the statutory notices were duly served on the assessee. A reference was made to the Transfer Pricing Officer (TPO) in order to compute the Arm’s Length Price (ALP) of the transactions the assessee had with its Associated Enterprise (AE). The TPO made an adjustment of Rs.1,06,30,175 towards ITES markup under charged and Rs.17,59,344 towards Business Support markup under charged. Besides the TP adjustments, the assessing officer made other additions towards corporate tax computing the assessed income under normal provisions at Rs.39,69,74,66,800 and book profits u/s. 115JB of the Act at Rs.58,10,92,52,652. On further appeal the CIT(A) gave partial relief to the assessee. Both the assessee and the revenue are in appeal against the order of CIT(A).

Conclusion-

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