Law:

Section:

Section 271(1)(a) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 - Penalty - For late filing of return - Assessment years 1967-68 and 1968-69 - Whether real cause of delay in filing return is specially in knowledge of assessee and revenue cannot be asked to establish that said cause was or was not reasonable - Held, yes - Whether assessee has to explain cause for delay and it is for authorities to determine whether cause was reasonable or not - Held, yes FACTS For the assessment year 1967-68, the return was filed four months late while for the assessment year 1968-69, it was filed 22 months late. The assessee did not appear before the ITO and so he had no occasion to know whether there was any reasonable cause for not filing the return. For the year 1968-69 the only ground taken was that the partner of the firm was unwell. The AAC repelled this ground by adding that there was no evidence showing that there was any serious illness of any of the partners. The grounds were held to be vague and inadequate. The Commissioner affirmed these findings. On writ, the assessee contended that since the return was below the taxable limit, the assessee was not liable to penalty under clause (a) section 271(1) and that the burden of establishing the absence of reasonable cause lay on the department and no evidence had been led to establish that fact. HELD The penalty under section 271(1)(a ) is imposable if the assessee had delayed in filing the return without reasonable cause. He has prima facie to satisfy the authorities that he had reasonable cause for the delay in filing the return. Under clause (a) the penalty is not imposed for any concealment or furnishing inaccurate particulars and, therefore, no question of establishing mens rea by the revenue arise. The real cause of the delay is specially in the knowledge of the assessee and the revenue cannot be asked to establish that the cause was or was not reasonable. The assessee has to explain the cause for the delay and it is for the authorities to determine whether the cause was reasonable or not. In the instant case, the finding of fact was that the cause shown was not reasonable. Though in the first year the return filed was below the…

Deprecated: trim(): Passing null to parameter #1 ($string) of type string is deprecated in /home/digixyei/sldsystempk.com/view/master-layout/view_case.php on line 492