Reason to believe that Income has escaped Assessment applies even in case of non-filing of return

Mohanlal Champalal Jain Vs ITO (Bombay High Court) Assessing Officer has proceeded on wrong premise that even when called upon to state why the petitioner had not filed return of income, he had not responded to the said query. The petitioner did communicate to the Department that he had no taxable income and therefore, there was no requirement to file the return. The Assessing Officer did not carry out any further inquiry before issuing the impugned notice. In the reasons, one more error pointed out by the petitioner is that the Assessing Officer referred to the sum of Rs. 18.82 crore as total...