COURT: | Supreme Court |
CORAM: | A. M. Khanwilkar J, Hemant Gupta J |
SECTION(S): | 43B |
GENRE: | Domestic Tax |
CATCH WORDS: | leave encashment, S. 43B deduction |
COUNSEL: | Chinmayee Chandra, Dr. Aman Hingorani |
DATE: | April 24, 2020 (Date of pronouncement) |
DATE: | April 25, 2020 (Date of publication) |
AY: | - |
FILE: | Click here to view full post with file download link |
CITATION: | |
Disallowance u/s 43B(f) to provision for leave encashment: Argument (inter alia) that s. 43B(f) is unconstitutional because it supersedes the judgement of the Supreme Court in Bharat Earth Movers vs. CIT 245 ITR 428 is wrong. S. 43B does not place any embargo upon the autonomy of the assessee in adopting a particular method of accounting, nor deprives the assessee of any lawful deduction. It merely imposes an additional condition of actual payment for the availment of deduction qua the specified head (entire law on how to determine constitutional validity of statutory provisions explained) |
The leave encashment scheme envisages the payment of a certain amount to the employees in lieu of their unused paid leaves in a year. The nature of this payment is beneficial and proemployee. However, it is not in the form of a bounty and forms a part of the conditions of service of the employee. An employer seeking deduction from tax liability in advance, in the name of discharging the liability of leave encashment, without actually extending such payment to the employee as and when the time for payment arises may lead to abhorrent consequences. When time for such payment arises upon retirement (or otherwise) of the employee, an employer may simply refuse to pay. Consequently, the innocent employee will be entangled in litigation in the evening of his/her life for claiming a hardearned right without any fault on his part. Concomitantly, it would entail in double benefit to the employer – advance deduction from tax liability without any burden of actual payment and refusal to pay as and when occasion arises. It is this mischief clause (f) seeks to subjugate
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