The tax allegedly sought to be evaded exceeded Rs. 25 lakhs, and the prosecution was sanctioned by the Principal CIT. On writ, the assessee contended that approval of a collegium of two Chief CIT\/Director General of Income-tax rank officers was necessary. The High Court held that, under CBDT Circular No. 24 of 2019, as clarified by Circular No. 5 of 2020, cases involving tax evasion exceeding Rs. 25 lakhs require approval of the sanctioning authority, namely the Principal CIT, whereas the requirement of approval by a collegium applies to specified smaller cases. Accordingly, the sanction granted by the Principal CIT was valid. (AY. 2011-12, 2012-13, 2014-15, 2017-18, 2019-20, 2020-21 & 2022-23)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
S. 276C: Offences and prosecutions-Wilful attempt to evade tax-Sanction-Where tax sought to be evaded exceeds Rs. 25 lakhs, approval of the Principal CIT as sanctioning authority is sufficient for prosecution under section 276C-CBDT Circular No. 24 of 2019, Circular No. 5 of 2020.[S. 119(2)(b), 278E, 279, Art.14, 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-64539","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-income-tax-act"],"acf":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p9S2Rw-gMX","jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64539","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=64539"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64539\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":64540,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/64539\/revisions\/64540"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=64539"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=64539"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/itatonline.org\/digest\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=64539"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}