AMIT BAJAJ ADVOCATE

Punjab & Haryana High Court in an important case namely CIT V M/S Careers Education and Infotech Pvt. Ltd., has held that voluntarily surrender of income cannot exonerate the assessee of its liability to pay penalty if it can be held that there was concealment of Income or furnishing of inacurate particulars. But in every case of surrender, inference of concealment of income cannot be drawn by itself by applying section 58 of Evidence Act.

The AO must establish and prove the concealment of income even if there is surrunder of income by assessee and mere surrender cannot lead to levy of penalty u/s 271(1)(c) for concealment of income.

Punjab Government has imposed a new tax namely institutional and building tax by promuglating ordinace dated January 10, 2011 by the name The Punjab (Institutions and Other Buildings) Tax Ordinance, 2010.This tax has been imposed on Buildings and Institutions situated outside the municipal areas in the state of Punjab.

As we know the house tax is imposed by Municipal bodies on the commercial buildings situated within their limits, but no such tax is payable on the buildings and insitutions (like marriage palaces, hotels, Dhabas, schools, water parks, amusement parks etc), situated outside the municipal limits. To bring an end to this inequality this new tax has been imposed (this was asserted by the Governement at the time of introduction of this tax few months back)