Allowing the writ petition and remanding the matter, the Orissa High Court held that exemption under section 12A should not be denied merely on account of a delay of 353 days in filing the audit report in Form 10B, particularly when the delay was attributable to genuine hardship. The Court observed that the Commissioner (Exemption) failed to consider the petitioner-trust\u2019s application for condonation of delay in its proper perspective under section 119(2)(b) read with CircularNo.10\/2019, dated 22-5-2019., despite the fact that the trust had been consistently availing exemption in earlier years and the delay occurred during the Covid-19 pandemic period, coupled with the auditor\u2019s negligence. Emphasising that procedural requirements should not override substantial justice, the Court held that the Commissioner had exercised discretion arbitrarily and without due application of mind. Accordingly, the impugned order rejecting condonation was set aside and the matter was remitted to the Commissioner to consider the audit report in Form 10B and grant consequential relief by treating the report as filed within the prescribed time.(AY. 2017-18)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 119 : Central Board of Direct Taxes-Circular-Charitable trust-Delay of 353 days in filing audit report in Form 10B-Genuine hardship due to Covid-19 and auditor\u2019s negligence-Condonation of delay-Matter remanded for granting exemption.[S. 12A, 119(2)(b), R.17B, Form No.10B, Art. 226]<\/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-59567","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-fuL","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59567","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=59567"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59567\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59568,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59567\/revisions\/59568"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59567"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59567"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59567"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}