Wednesday, December 2, 2009 0:54 IST
Mumbai: The Bombay high court on Tuesday dismissed an appeal by the I-T department against Bollywood star Salman Khan for an alleged tax evasion of Rs1.03 crore in 1999-2000. The department had moved the high court challenging an order of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) early this year. The ITAT had in April this year upheld an order passed by commissioner of income tax (CIT-A). The CIT had set aside an order passed by an assessing officer (AO) who had accused Salman of evading tax amounting to Rs1.03 crore. In 1999, Salman had declared his total income for the year at Rs2,95,09,771. But the AO ruled that his total income was Rs4,63,64,106. The department had in 2006 re-assessed the returns filed by Salman in 1999-2000, but they did not issue any intimation to the actor. The lawyer representing the actor argued that there is a recent ruling by the Bombay high court, which had made it mandatory for the AO to issue intimation notice to the assessee (in this case, Salman) under section 143(3)/147. The AO had not issued any such notice to the actor while re-assessing his returns, argued the lawyer. The division bench of justice VC Daga and justice JP Devadhar also came down heavily on the counsels of the I-T department for not having knowledge of recent judgments delivered by the high courts and the Supreme Court. "We will be failing in our duty if we do not observe that counsel for the revenue should know the recent judgments by the SC and HC. But unfortunately, the advocate did not know about it," the judges observed. The judges also observed that the lawyer for the department is either not ready to argue the case or does not know the case.
CAclubindia
