Income Tax : The ruling clarifies that unauthenticated digital chats and screenshots cannot form the sole basis of tax additions without proper...
Income Tax : Examine the legal disputes surrounding Section 153D approvals for tax assessments, including court rulings on mechanical approvals...
Income Tax : ITAT Ahmedabad held that WhatsApp chats indicating suppressed production for one month could not be extrapolated to the entire fin...
Income Tax : The ITAT Delhi held that a common satisfaction note covering multiple assessment years without year-wise incriminating material co...
Income Tax : The Tribunal held that contradictory third-party statements and unverified allegations cannot form the sole basis for taxing alleg...
Income Tax : The Kerala High Court remanded the matter after finding that the ITAT failed to expressly adjudicate the challenge to the validity...
Income Tax : The Mumbai ITAT held that reassessment proceedings under Section 147/148 were invalid where the case was based on search material ...
ITAT Delhi held that no addition can be made u/s 153A of the Income Tax Act without there being any incriminating material relating to unabated assessment year. Therefore, additions made in the assessment order is deleted and appeal is partly allowed.
ITAT Delhi set aside 43 search assessments involving a business group and its associates, ruling that the mass approvals granted under Section 153D were invalid.1 The Tribunal held that approving 23 draft orders within 24 hours without proper review constitutes a mechanical, non-judicial exercise of power.
ITAT Mumbai quashed search assessments under Section 153C, ruling that a single, non-speaking, and mechanical approval granted under Section 153D for multiple assessment years is invalid.
Delhi ITAT ruled that a single, non-speaking approval u/s 153D issued for 14 assessment years and two assessees was invalid, holding that approval must be year-specific and assessee-specific. All assessments were quashed as void ab initio.
The ITAT Delhi allowed the appeal of Vivaan Prakash, quashing the u/s 153C assessment for AY 2018-19. The Tribunal ruled that the single u/s 153D approval granted by the Addl. CIT for two assessment years was mechanical and lacked application of mind, vitiating the entire assessment based on precedents like PCIT v. Shiv Kumar Nayyar (Delhi HC).
Relying on Delhi High Court’s ruling in Shiv Kumar Nayyar, the Tribunal held that granting a consolidated, template-style approval for multiple assessment years under Section 153D is illegal. The key takeaway is that the mandatory approval for a search assessment (Sec. 153C/153D) requires independent application of mind for each assessment year.
The Delhi ITAT sustained a Rs.42.98 lakh addition for unexplained expenditure found in a seized diary, ruling that the entries proved a sufficient nexus to the assessee under Section 292C. However, the Tribunal provided partial relief by directing the lower tax rate under the pre-amendment Section 115BBE to be applied for AY 2015-16.
This decision reinforces the legal requirement that supervisory approval under Section 153D is a substantive safeguard, not an empty ritual. The High Court affirmed that granting blanket sanction to 246 assessments through a generic endorsement is equivalent to a mechanical approval that fails to satisfy legislative intent.
The Tribunal allowed the taxpayer’s legal ground, holding that the statutory requirement of prior approval under Section 153D was reduced to an empty formality. The ruling emphasizes that the approval must indicate due application of mind to the seized material and issues for each assessment year and cannot be a generic, consolidated format.
Following the ratio of the Delhi High Court, the ITAT held that the rubber stamp approval {u/s 153D} was non est in law, leading to the quashing of all assessments and the deletion of huge additions made against the assessee. The key takeaway for taxpayers is the success of challenging search assessments on the legal ground of invalid, mechanical u/s 153D approval.
