Income Tax Officer, Ward 5 v. Prakash Pandurang Patil
JAO vs FAO – SC allows MA of Revenue & has recalled it’s earlier order whereby it has dismissed Revenue’s SLP. Now all SLP’s will be heard together.
M/S. SHIV STEELS VERSUS THE STATE OF ASSAM & ORS.
The Supreme Court observed that no tax can be imposed by inference or analogy when the taxing statutes do not authorize the imposition of tax. It added that tax authorities cannot bypass statutory limitation periods by administrative sanction.
A bench of Justices JB Pardiwala and Sandeep Mehta heard a matter related to the assessment under the Assam General Sales Tax Act 1993 (“Act”) where the Sales Tax department had ordered the re-assessments of the Appellant-entity for three years between 2003-2006 under Section 21 of the Act soon after the assessment of these years was declared time barred under Section 19 of the Act.
As per Section 21 of the Act, reassessment can be directed within four months only when no assessment was carried out within the time frame prescribed under Section 19 of the Act.
To reopen the assessment, the department took the Commissioner’s accord/sanction to justify their claim for assessment. Aggrieved by the Gauhati High Court’s decision upholding the reassessment, the appellant-entity approached the Supreme Court.
Setting aside the High Court’s decision, the Court noted that the High Court erred in misinterpreting both the provisions of Sections 19 and 21 of the Act, as the benefit of Section 21 could have been undertaken by the department only when the assessment was not carried out under Section 19. Since the assessment was carried out under Section 19, but happened to be time-barred, the Court said that no assessment can be carried out under Section 21 of the Act.
The Court clarified that Section 21 applies only where no assessment has been made within the period under Section 19. It cannot be invoked to salvage assessments already held to be barred by the limitation.
Accordingly, the appeal was allowed.