Dismissing the appeal of the Revenue the Court held that prior to the insertion of sections\u00a0153A,\u00a0153B\u00a0and\u00a0153C\u00a0of the\u00a0Income-tax Act, 1961, an assessment in respect of a search case was regulated by Chapter XIV-B of the Act, comprising sections\u00a0158B\u00a0to\u00a0158BI\u00a0which embodied the concept of a block assessment. A block assessment in a search case undertaken under the provisions in Chapter XIV-B was ordained to be undertaken simultaneously and parallelly to a regular assessment. Contrary to the scheme underlying Chapter XIV-B, sections\u00a0153A,\u00a0153B\u00a0and\u00a0153C\u00a0contemplate a merger of regular assessments with those pursuant to a search. On a search being undertaken, under section\u00a0153A, the jurisdictional Assessing Officer is enabled to initiate an assessment or reassessment, in respect of the six assessment years immediately preceding the assessment year relevant to the year of search and also in respect of the \u201crelevant assessment year\u201d, as defined by Explanation 1 to section\u00a0153A. Of equal significance is the introduction of the concept of abatement of all pending assessments.<\/p>\n
\u00a0<\/p>\n
Amendments introduced in sections\u00a0153A,\u00a0153B\u00a0and\u00a0153C\u00a0by virtue of the Finance Act, 2017 ([2017] 393 ITR (St.) 1), for the first time adopted the concept of the \u201crelevant assessment year\u201d and provided an Explanation for the term and defined the expression \u201crelevant assessment year\u201d. Both sections\u00a0153A\u00a0and\u00a0153C\u00a0embody non obstante clauses and are in express terms ordained to override sections\u00a0139,\u00a0147\u00a0to\u00a0149,\u00a0151\u00a0and\u00a0153. By virtue of the 2017 Act, amendments were introduced in section\u00a0153A\u00a0in the year 2017 which included, inter alia, extension of the search assessment block to ten assessment years consequent to the addition of the stipulation of \u201crelevant assessment year\u201d which was defined to mean those years which would fall beyond the six year block period but not later than ten assessment years. The 2017 Act also stipulated in the fourth proviso to the section, certain prerequisite conditions which would have to inevitably be shown to be satisfied before the search assessment could stretch to the \u201crelevant assessment year\u201d. The preconditions include the prescription of income having escaped assessment and represented in the form of an asset amounting to or being \u201clikely to amount to\u201d Rs. 50 lakhs or more in the \u201crelevant assessment year\u201d or in aggregate in the \u201crelevant assessment years\u201d.<\/p>\n
As in the case of section\u00a0153A, section\u00a0153C\u00a0which pertains to the other person other than the entity subjected to search was also to apply to all searches that may have been undertaken between the period June 1, 2003 and March 31, 2021. In terms of that provision, the Assessing Officer is similarly empowered to undertake and initiate an assessment in respect of the other entity for the six assessment years and for \u201cthe relevant assessment year\u201d. The assessment years, which would consequently be thrown open for assessment or reassessment under section\u00a0153C\u00a0follow lines pari materia with section\u00a0153A.<\/p>\n
The first proviso to section\u00a0153C\u00a0introduces a legal fiction on the basis of which the commencement date for computation of the six year or the ten year block period is deemed to be the date of receipt of books of account by the jurisdictional Assessing Officer of the other party. The identification of the starting block for the purposes of computation of the six year and ten year periods is governed by the first proviso to section\u00a0153C, which significantly shifts the reference to the point in section\u00a0153A(1), while defining the point from which the period of the \u201crelevant assessment year\u201d is to be calculated, to the date of receipt of the books of account, documents or assets seized by the jurisdictional Assessing Officer of the non-searched party. In the assessment under section\u00a0153C\u00a0the starting point is the handing over of books of account or documents or assets seized during the search under section\u00a0132\u00a0of the searched party by the Assessing Officer to the jurisdictional Assessing Officer of the other person and that event constitutes the point from which the preceding six assessment years or the \u201crelevant assessment year\u201d has to be computed.(AY.2010-11 to 2013-14)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 153C : Assessment-Income of any other person-Search and seizure-Limitation-Six years in respect of which assessment permitted to be reckoned-Date of commencement-Commences from date materials handed over to jurisdictional Assessing Officer of third person-Threshold limit of Rs. 50 Lakhs-Not qualifying criteria for each of relevant assessment year of period independently-Cumulative computation in excess of Rs. 50 Lakhs qualifies statutory requirements-Search assessment in respect of all searches conducted between 31-5-2003 and 31-3-2021-Legislative Intent-No immunity intended to be attached to assessments attaining closure before 31-3-2021-Date of receipt of books of account or documents or assets seized or requisitioned by jurisdictional Assessing Officer of non-searched person and not actual date of search-Amendments of 2017 is not applicable since search was conducted prior to introduction of amendments-Consequently extended ten year block period cannot be applied. [S. 132, 153A, 153C, 260A] <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-47478","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-clM","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47478","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=47478"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47478\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47479,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/47478\/revisions\/47479"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=47478"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=47478"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=47478"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}