9911796707
TMI Blog1991 (5) TMI 15X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... 1968-69 imposed on Sardar jeewan Singh and interest due thereon. While entertaining the writ petition by an order dated March 3, 1982, this court had granted the following interim order : "Issue notice. Meanwhile, the operation of the notices dated December 31, 1981, and January 30, 1982, as modified by the order dated February 6, 1982, shall remain stayed provided petitioner No. 1 furnishes security to the satisfaction of the Income-tax Officer (Wealth-tax), 'E' Ward, Saharanpur, within a month from today and deposits one-fourth of the amount due within a period of three months from today and thereafter goes on depositing an equal amount every quarter till the entire demand against the father of petitioner No. 1, i.e., Sardar jeewan Singh, covered by the notices stands satisfied." During the -course of hearing, learned counsel for the petitioner did not address us on the validity of the notices under section 226(3) aforesaid ; presumably, the amount must have been paid in due course by the first petitioner in pursuance of the order passed by this court. We are, therefore, not required to go into the validity to the challenge or into the correctness or otherwise of the noti ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... hat amount was agreed to be included in the assessment and was factually brought to tax without any protest. The argument was that mere addition in the wealth-tax return filed by the assessee, which could not be shown in the return under a bona fide mistake, would not ipso facto amount to having not made a full and true disclosure of the net wealth nor could the disclosure in question have been branded as not made in good faith. Our attention was also invited to the Explanation appended to section 18B(1) of the Act, which elaborates and furnishes a statutory fiction for the purposes of finding out whether there had been a full and true disclosure of net wealth. It provides that person shall be deemed to have made full and true disclosure of his assets or debts in any case where the excess of net wealth assessed over the net wealth returned is of such a nature as not to attract the provisions of clause (c) of sub-section (1) of section 18. We were also referred to the assessment order for the assessment year 1968-69 to show that, in the instant case, no proceedings for penalty were initiated under section 18(1)(c) of the Act. It was also argued that the Commissioner had failed to re ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... section 18(2A) before it was omitted and the present section was inserted by the Amendment Act, 1975, or in the corresponding section 273A under the Income-tax Act, 1961, where a similar expression is used, has been the subject-matter of discussion in several cases before this court as well as before other High Courts. It may be noticed that the provisions of section 18(2A) of the Wealth-tax Act, 1957, before their deletion, were in pari materia with the present provisions of section 18B(1) of the Act. In Hasan Ahmad Khan v. CWT [1975] 99 ITR 414, a Division Bench of this court, while dealing with a case concerning section 18(2A), as it then stood, ruled as under (at page 417): " . . . . the condition precedent for exercising jurisdiction under section 18(2A) is satisfied where an assessee, whether negligently or not, has, while making full disclosure of his net wealth, acted honestly. This necessarily implies that in some cases the assessee might be negligent in making a disclosure about his net wealth, and that is why the net wealth disclosed by him may not be found to be correct, but if he honestly thought that he had fully disclosed his net wealth he would not be lacking in g ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X ..... disclosed by an assessee has not been accepted or something else has been added would not straightaway deprive the assessee in every case of the relief contemplated under section 18B(1) unless it has been found as a fact that the assessee had acted dishonestly. The case set up by the petitioner is that because of an unintentional mistake, a small portion of his taxable wealth was left out to be shown in the return, but nevertheless, the disclosure was honest and in " good faith ". For the respondents, no counter affidavit has been filed controverting these assertions. The Commissioner, in his order, has not gone into this question, as he has chosen to rest his decision on the question of " good faith " by saying that it was absent or that the disclosure of net wealth could not be treated as full and complete as an item of Rs. 5,460 was added to the wealth disclosed in the return. This, by itself, in our opinion, was not sufficient to refuse the relief which the assessee had asked for. The Commissioner ought to have called his attention to matters which he was bound to consider in law. It is no doubt true that the powers conferred on the Commissioner are discretionary but, at the sa ..... X X X X Extracts X X X X X X X X Extracts X X X X
|
