Assessment to Be Completed u/s 153A if Assessee Confirmed Info. About Foreign Bank by Filing Revised ITR During Search

Case Details: Rajinder Kumar vs. ACIT - [2024] 163 taxmann.com 445 (Delhi - Trib.)

Judiciary and Counsel Details

• S. Rifaur Rahman, Accountant Member & Sudhir Pareek, Judicial Member
• V. Sridharan, Sr. Adv., Karanjot Singh, Snehal Ranjan Shukla, Romit Hotwani & Dinesh Kukreja, Advs. for the Appellant.
• P.N. Barnwal, CIT DR & Vivek Vardhan, SR. DR for the Respondent.

Facts of the Case

The assessee was searched under section 132. During the search, the Assessing Officer (AO) confronted the assessee with a bank statement from HSBC Bank, London, received from the FT & TR division of the CBDT. The assessee accepted the same and offered the income from such a bank account in the return of income. The AO completed the assessment under section 153A, treating the income as undisclosed income.

The assessee filed an appeal before CIT(A), contending that the search was conducted based on the information obtained from the FT & TR division. The information was not search material as the assessee had disclosed the income voluntarily. However, the CIT(A) confirmed the additions and the assessee filed an instant appeal with the Tribunal.

ITAT Held

The Tribunal held that the search was initiated to verify the information available with the revenue through the FT&TR division of CBDT, and the assessee confirmed the same in the assessment proceedings. Also, the assessee did not retract his statement.

The relevant documents were confronted before the assessee, and after considering the various contents in the bank account received from the foreign bank, no matter how it was acquired, the assessee accepted the same and proceeded to revise the return of income. This shows that the documents collected by the revenue from the foreign authorities were genuine, and there was no need to follow the procedure in section 65B of the Indian Evidence Act.

In the instant case, the assessee had not retracted the acceptance of the contents of the statement of bank account produced before him, nor before revenue authorities in the revision or appellate proceedings. Therefore, the material with the revenue was to be considered proper, and the action of the AO to accept the revised return of income and proceed to complete the assessment would prove that the material with the revenue could be assessable under section 153A.

List of Cases Referred to

• Soignee R. Kothari v. Dy. CIT [2017] 81 taxmann.com 340/[2016] 285 CTR 230/386 ITR 466 (Bombay) (para 16).