Jharkhand High Court emphasizes IT department duty-bound to provide all information to assessee on assessment order

Jharkhand High Court emphasizes IT department duty-bound to provide all information to assessee on assessment order

Directs it to reach the conclusion in accordance with the law

The Jharkhand High Court has held that under Section 148A of the Income Tax Act, 1961, the department is duty-bound and mandatorily required to provide the petitioner with all information, inquiry material, and supporting documents obtained, on which reliance was placed for an assessment order.

The bench of Justice Rongon Mukhopadhyay and Justice Deepak Roshan observed that supporting documents were not provided to the assessee by the IT department. It also did not provide the details uploaded on the insight portal, along with the information gathered from the investigation wing.

The petitioner/assessee company is a charitable and religious trust registered with the Registrar of Companies under Section 8 of the Companies Act, 2013 and Section 12A of the IT Act. The assessee provides benefits to the members of the diocese of the Chota Nagpur region and across India’s management of churches, and social welfare activities.

The company was served a notice under Section 148A(b) for the Financial Year 2019-2020, to which it duly responded and filed a detailed reply. The petitioner specifically raised an objection regarding the issuance of notice under Section 148A(b).

It submitted that the show-cause notice was issued in utter violation of the provisions of Section 148A, as it was issued without providing details of the information or inquiry conducted on which reliance was placed. Also, no supporting documents were enclosed, as alleged.

(Section 148A(a) deals with the conduct of an inquiry with prior approval of specified authorities regarding information, suggesting that income is chargeable to tax escaped assessment).

Thus, the court remitted the matter back to the respondent to supply all relied-upon documents based on which the notice was issued. It directed the authorities to pass the order in accordance with the law.