The Assessee\u2019s returns were completed, but information received under the Indo-France DTAA alleged undisclosed HSBC (Suisse) accounts. A search under Sec. 132 yielded no incriminating material, yet reassessment\/additions were made, and criminal complaints were filed.<\/p>\n
The Assessee argued the DTAA material was unauthenticated and unverified (not obtained from Swiss primary sources) and there was no independent corroboration linking him to any Swiss account. Since no incriminating material was found in the search and the Hon\u2019ble Tribunal had set aside the assessment additions, the basis for prosecution did not survive. The Assessee also contended that insisting on a \u201cConsent Waiver Form\u201d to seek Swiss information was a roving enquiry and refusal to sign could not be treated as evidence of guilt; there was no material showing willful tax evasion. The Revenue argued that the absence of recovery in search is not decisive, that assessment outcomes do not bind criminal courts, and that the Hon\u2019ble Tribunal\u2019s order was only on jurisdiction\/technical grounds (no incriminating material) rather than merits. Revenue also claimed that\u00a0 to sign the waiver and non-compliance with s. 142(1) notices constituted separate offences. The Hon\u2019ble Delhi High Court quashed both complaints, holding there was no credible corroborative evidence establishing the essential ingredients of Sec. 276C (1)(i), 276D and 277(1). The case rested on unauthenticated DTAA inputs with no incriminating recovery, and non-signing of the consent waiver, on such inputs, could not justify criminal prosecution.(AY. 2006-07, 2007-08]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 276C : Offences and prosecutions-Wilful attempt to evade tax-HSBC (Suisse) accounts-Unauthenticated DTAA-sourced information from France about alleged Swiss bank accounts, coupled with no incriminating material found in search and no corroboration, cannot sustain prosecution.[S.132, 132(4), 276D, 277, 278E] <\/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-59637","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-fvT","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59637","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=59637"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59637\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":59640,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/59637\/revisions\/59640"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=59637"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=59637"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=59637"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}