• Notification Date: 22-03-2023
• Notification No: N/A

ITAT Imposes Rs. 2000 Penalty on Assessee

Jaipur bench of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) imposed the penalty of Rs 2000 on assessee because of the negligent attitude during the income tax proceedings. The brief fact of the case is that the commissioner of Income Tax (CIT (A)) has erred in sustaining the addition of Rs. 17, 19,182/- made by the assessing officer on account of Long-Term Capital Gain by adopting the valuation done by the DVO as sale consideration of the agricultural land sold by assessee on one side, besides reducing the cost of acquisition claimed by the appellant resulting into an addition of Rs. 17, 19,182/-. 

The commissioner of Income Tax [CIT (A)] also erred in sustaining the action of the assessing officer who adopted the valuation done by DVO as sale consideration of the property sold by the appellant without dealing with the objections filed by the appellant on such valuation and erred in reducing the cost of acquisition of the property claimed by the appellant merely on his estimations. The additional ground raised by the assessee is regarding application of section 50C of the Income Tax Act, 1961 which was wrongly applied by the assessing officer and confirmed by the commissioner of Income Tax [CIT (A)]. 

The counsel for the department, Monisha Choudhary, objected the admission of the additional ground and submitted that when the assessee has not raised this ground in the original grounds of appeal, then the assessee has accepted the findings of the commissioner of Income Tax (CIT (A)) on these issues. The counsel for the assessee, Mukesh Khandelwal, submitted that the application of provisions of section 50C of the Income Tax Act, 1061 is unjustified and the addition made by the assessing officer and sustained by the commissioner of Income Tax (CIT (A)) deserves to be quashed. 

The Coram comprising the account member Rathod Kamlesh Jayantbhai and the judicial member Sandeep Gosain observed that while deciding the appeal of the assessee, the appellant was provided many opportunities for furnishing written submissions/documents. There was no compliance on the part of the assessee. 

It also held that “the commissioner of Income Tax (CIT (A)) has confirmed the order of the assessing officer in absence of any submissions from the side of the assessee and non-appearance of the assessee before the CIT (A). From the entire sequence of events and the conduct of the assessee in noncompliance of the repeated notices, it appears gross negligence on the part of the assessee and wastage of precious time. In our considered view, noncompliance of notice issued by the Authorities and nonappearance before the Authorities despite repeated notices/summons is dis-regard towards the Authorities.” The matter was restored to the file of the CIT (A) for adjudicating the matter afresh after providing reasonable opportunity to the assessee, the appeal of the assessee got partly allowed for statistical purposes.