The Assessing Officer mechanically rejected the assessee\u2019s application for stay of demand under section 220(6) during the pendency of its first appeal, insisting on a mandatory 20% pre-deposit by relying strictly on CBDT Office Memorandums. The Hon\u2019ble Delhi High Court observed that the administrative circulars\/OMs issued by the CBDT do not operate as an inflexible fetter on the quasi-judicial discretion of the Assessing Officer. The authorities are bound to evaluate stay applications objectively, balancing the interests of the Revenue against the assessee’s rights by considering parameters such as a strong prima facie case, financial hardship, balance of convenience, and likelihood of success. Insisting on a standard deposit without looking into the individual merits constitutes a failure of judicial discretion. The impugned order was set aside and the matter was remitted to the Assessing Officer for a fresh review. (AY. 2023-24)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 220: Collection and recovery of tax-Stay of demand-Pendency of appeal before CIT(A)-CBDT Office Memorandums do not mandate a rigid pre-deposit of 20%-Assessing Officers must judicially exercise discretion based on prima facie merits, financial hardship, and potential hardship-Matter remanded to the Assessing Officer. [S. 220(6), 250, 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_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-64464","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-gLK","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64464","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=64464"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64464\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64465,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64464\/revisions\/64465"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64464"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64464"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64464"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}