{"id":62994,"date":"2026-07-30T16:27:12","date_gmt":"2026-07-30T10:57:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/sutherland-global-services-inc-v-asst-cit-2025-131-itr-269-trib\/"},"modified":"2026-07-30T16:31:27","modified_gmt":"2026-07-30T11:01:27","slug":"sutherland-global-services-inc-v-asst-cit-2025-131-itr-269-trib","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/sutherland-global-services-inc-v-asst-cit-2025-131-itr-269-trib\/","title":{"rendered":"Sutherland Global Services Inc v. Asst. CIT (2025) 131 ITR 269 (Chennai)(Trib)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"font-claude-response-body\" style=\"margin: 0in; margin-bottom: .0001pt; text-align: justify; line-height: 150%;\"><span lang=\"EN-IN\" style=\"font-family: 'Verdana',sans-serif;\">The assessee&#8217;s appeal, delayed on account of the covid-19 pandemic and erroneous advice from its tax advisor regarding the correct appellate forum, also raised an additional legal ground challenging the validity of the DRP&#8217;s and AO&#8217;s orders for want of a valid computer-generated document identification number as mandated by CBDT Circular No. 19 of 2019. On appeal, the Tribunal condoned the delay in light of the SC&#8217;s covid-19 limitation extension and the reasonable cause shown, admitted the additional ground being a pure question of law, and held that the circular, being binding on all Income-tax authorities, mandated allotment and quoting of a document identification number in the body of every communication, which requirement was not satisfied by a handwritten number generated subsequently and not traceable in the Department&#8217;s database; it further held that the DRP&#8217;s directions were not merely internal communications but were required to comply with the circular, that the DRP itself constituted an Income-tax authority bound by such circulars, and that since its directions were non est for want of a valid document identification number, the extended limitation under section 144C(13) for passing the final assessment order did not apply, rendering the final assessment order barred by limitation, void ab initio, and liable to be quashed. (AY. 2006-07 to 2020-21)<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>S. 144C: Reference to dispute resolution panel  Assessment-Validity-Final assessment order pursuant to Dispute Resolution Panel&#8217;s directions-Order time-barred once Dispute Resolution Panel&#8217;s order held non est for want of document identification number-Extended time under section 144C(13) inapplicable-Final assessment order bad in law. [S. 116, 144C, 153, 253, 254(1)]<\/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_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[21],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-62994","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-go2","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62994","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=62994"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62994\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":63010,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62994\/revisions\/63010"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62994"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62994"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62994"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}