Held that where the Assessing Officer does not record satisfaction on the material recovered from the entities, i. e., the searched persons, and without recording such satisfaction on the incriminating material, proceedings under sections 147 and 148 of the Act are been resorted to, this is in direct conflict with the provisions of section 153C of the Act. The jurisdictional Assessing Officer cannot directly invoke the provisions of sections 147 and 148 of the Act for reopening of the assessment unless he or she is in receipt of the satisfaction note on the incriminating material while exercising power under section 153C of the Act. Apart from the material sent to the jurisdictional Assessing Officer, if such officer has knowledge or information from other sources which tends to establish escapement of income, then, in such a case, the provisions of sections 147 and 148 of the Act can be resorted to, subject to fulfilment of the conditions. It is a settled legal precedent and a statutory obligation upon the jurisdictional Assessing Officer of the third person, to record his satisfaction, and there is no escape from recording satisfaction on the incriminating material sent to him by the Assessing Officer of the searched person, who was subjected to search under section 132 of the Act. Both sections 153A and 153C begin with non obstante clauses, referring to the provisions of sections 147 and 148 of the Act. These provisions have an overriding effect over the regular provisions of assessment or reassessment. The provisions of section 147 can be invoked by the Assessing Officer if he has reason to believe that any income has escaped assessment for any assessment year. This facet is different from the knowledge acquired of undisclosed income from the incriminating material collected during search and seizure. Hence, it is not open to the Assessing Officer to invoke the provisions of sections 147 and 148 of the Act for reopening the assessment on the incriminating material gathered during search and seizure under section 132 or 132B of the Act, when the special provisions beginning with non obstante clauses are engrafted in the statute. The Department cannot bypass the statutory provisions of sections 153A and 153C of the Act and directly invoke the provisions of sections 147 and 148 of the Act merely because the Department faces numerous assessees whose names have been unearthed during search and whom it believes have evaded tax. The legal principle “what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly” is a foundation of the legal system, as it safeguards the interests of citizens. The law cannot be bypassed through incidental means if such actions are directly forbidden by law. It is trite that when a statute vests certain power in an authority to be exercised in a particular manner, that authority has to exercise such power by following the manner prescribed in the statute, and any exercise of power by statutory authorities inconsistent with the statutory prescription is invalid. (AY. 2011-12 to 2014-15)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 153A: Assessment-Search-Recording of satisfaction note by Assessing Officer of person in respect of whom search conducted Mandatory-Settlement commission-Admission-In absence thereof, jurisdictional Assessing Officer of “other person” cannot assume jurisdiction solely on basis of material sent to him by Assessing Officer of searched person-Reassessment-Assessment of third person-Non obstante provisions-Assessing Officer cannot directly invoke sections 147 and 148 merely because numerous assessees’ names have been unearthed during search and whom it believes have evaded tax-Reassessment under general provisions permissible on basis of material collected post-search from any other independent source-Information regarding payment of cash received post-search on basis of admission before Settlement Commission Information sufficient to reopen the assessment-to trigger action under sections 147 and 148-Held, Department was justified in reopening assessment on information received subsequently-Assessment of third person-No satisfaction note recorded by Assessing Officer of entity subjected to search-Material merely supplied to jurisdictional Assessing Office of “other person”-Not sufficient-What cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly-Circular No. 24 of 2015 dated 31-12-2015(2016) 380 ITR 32 (St). [S. 147, 148, 153C, 245C, 245D 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_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-64305","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-gJb","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64305","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=64305"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64305\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64306,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64305\/revisions\/64306"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64305"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64305"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64305"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}