The Commissioner Of Income Tax, Faridabad v. To Be Referred To Reporters Or Not ?

IN THE HIGH COURT OF PUNJAB AND HARYANA AT CHANDIGARH. Case No. : I. T. A. No. 441 of 2014 Date of Decision : July 04, 2016 The Commissioner of Income Tax, Faridabad .... Appellant vs. Smt. Anju Jindal ....Respondents CORAM :HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE S. J. VAZIFDAR, ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE.HON'BLE MR. JUSTICE DEEPAK SIBAL. * * * To be referred to Reporters or not ? Whether the judgment should be reported in the digest ? * * * Present :Mr. Tajinder K. Joshi, Advocatefor the appellant. Mr. Sachin Bhardwaj, Advocate for the respondent. * * * S. J. VAZIFDAR, A.C.J.(Oral) : Invoking the provisions of Section 260-A of the Income TaxAct, 1961 (hereinafter referred to as – the Act), the present appeal has beenpreferred by the Revenue to challenge therein the order of the Income TaxAppellate Tribunal, Delhi Bench “A”, New Delhi (hereinafter referred to as– the Tribunal). The matter in question pertains to the assessment year 2007-08.In the appeal, the following question of law, among others, has been raised :- “Whether on the facts and in thecircumstances of the case, the Tribunal wascorrect in law in upholding the decision of the Ld.CIT (A) in deleting the addition of Rs.1,33,29,548/- made by the Assessing Officer onaccount of bogus purchases especially when theassessee failed to prove that purchases weregenuine.” The facts, in brief, which need to be noticed for adjudicatingupon the present appeal, are that the Assessing Officer, after holding thatthe purchases from five creditors/vendors, the names of whom weretabulated in the assessment order, were bogus, ordered to disallow suchpurchases made by the assessee from those creditors. For arriving at thatconclusion, the Assessing Officer noted that in spite of opportunity granted,none of the afore-referred five creditors/vendors had been produced by theassessee and no reason for the same had been offered. The CIT (Appeals), Faridabad and the Tribunal, after examination of the entire record, inter alia, noted that for the assessmentyear in question, the assessee had declared sales of over Rs.2.17 crores, asalso gross profit @ 2.69% against the sales of about Rs.1.16 crores withgross profit @ 2.98% for the previous year. The books of accounts of theassessee, which were duly audited as per provisions of the Act, were foundto be not questioned by the Assessing Officer. Although the AssessingOfficer ordered deletion of the purchases made from the afore-referred five the total declared sales of the assessee of over Rs. 2.17 crores, as also theexpenses debited to the profit and loss account, which were based on thepurchases ordered to be disallowed by him. Moreover, the Tribunal notedthat the assessee had fully co-operated in the proceedings before theAssessing Officer by giving details of the disputed creditors, but suchinformation was not acted upon by the Assessing Officer in accordance withthe prescribed procedure and was wrongly brushed aside by him only on theground that the same had been provided at a late stage of the proceedings.The Assessing Officer was found to have the necessary particulars regardingthe above referred five creditors, but for the reasons best known to him, hedid not summon any of them. More importantly, the Tribunal noted that forall the purchases ordered to be disallowed by the Assessing Officer,payments had been made by the assessee through account payee cheques,which remained unquestioned by the Assessing Officer. The creditors,having been paid through account payee cheques could thus have easilybeen traced. After appreciating the afore-referred rival contentions, the CIT(Appeals) and the Tribunal had concurrently upheld the assessee'scontentions. These decisions essentially determine questions of fact and wefind that out of them, no question of law, much less a substantial question oflaw, arises, requiring interference on our part and once that conclusion isarrived at by us, the only fate, that the present appeal deserves, is dismissal,which we accordingly order. dependent upon and being a consequence of the afore-reproduced question, would resultantly meet the same fate. Dismissed. ( S. J. VAZIFDAR ) ACTING CHIEF JUSTICE July 04, 2016monika ( DEEPAK SIBAL )JUDGE