AMIT BAJAJ ADVOCATE

The Punjab & Haryana High Court in an important case namely Manager, Union Bank of India Ludhiana Versus Commissioner of Income Tax Ludhiana has held that faliure to submit form 15H within time by the Bank would not attract any penalty proceedings u/s 272A(2)(f) since its a default of technical nature. Relying upon  the judgment in The Commissioner of Income Tax Vs. State Bank of Patiala, [2004 -TMI - 10582 - PUNJAB AND HARYANA High Court ] wherein it had been held that unless there was a deliberate default in furnishing the certificates and if no loss of revenue had occasioned due to the said unintentional default on the part of the assessee, no penalty was exigible, the case is decided in favour of assessee by the High Court.

Delhi High Court has held in an important case that exemption u/s 54F of Income Tax Act, 1961 will also be available against depericiable asset if it is a long term capital asset i.e if it has been acquired for more that a period of three years.

The Rajkot ITAT has held in an important case namely Vineetkumar Raghavjibhai Bhalodia vs. ITO that HUF is included in the list of relative and gift from HUF will be exempt as HUF is also a group of relatives. This is very important decision in my view as per this order if a person recieves gift from his HUF then such gift will be termed as gift from relative and no tax implications would arise.

After the stay of service tax on lawyers by Delhi, Gauahati and AP High Courts,  Madras High Court has also stayed the levy of service tax on Lawyers. Madras High Court has not only interimly stayed levy and collection of service tax on lawyers but also has restrained the service tax department from compelling the lawyers to get registered under the Service Tax Law.

Punjab Government Excise and Taxation Department has finaly released excel based e-filing software utility for  e-filing of VAT Return Forms. It is to be noted that VAT 23 and VAT 24 return forms which relates to details of sales and purchase within the state, were changed recently. New VAT 23 and 24 return forms contains information related to the details of commodity vise sales and purchase. List of commodities which have to be mentioned in the return forms VAT 23 and 24, has also been provided.

The Punjab government today decided to provide much needed relief to the people of the state by not charging Value Added Tax (VAT) on the recently increased amount of diesel and LPG. 

With the exemption of VAT on the recently increased amount, diesel would become cheaper by approximately 25 paise per litre and LPG by Rs.2.50 per cylinder. To offset the price hike, the state government had given these concessions from its own resources benefiting the farmers, transporters and general consumers. With these concessions, the state government would lose about Rs 75 crore of revenue per annum.

Bombay High Court in an important case namely Titanor Components LTD V ACIT  has held that reopening of assessment u/s 147/148 cannot be allowed merely because the assessee has made wrong claim of deduction in the return of income, if there was no faliure on the part of the assessee and no reason to this effect is recorded by the AO in the original assessment order. I have found this judgement as an important one in the context of reopening of assessment under Income Tax Act, hence sharing it herebelow

In the budget of 2011-12 Branded Readymade garments were brought under the Central Excise. CBEC has given a clarification in regard to issues pertaining to the levy of excise duty on branded readymade garments and made-up articles of textiles.