Interlocutory remand order in tax proceedings did not bar challenge to earlier findings in appeal against fresh assessment.

Section 105(2) CPC was treated as a rule confined to civil proceedings under that Code and not as a general bar in tax appeals. An order of remand that leaves a material income item open for fresh adjudication does not finally determine the assessment and is therefore interlocutory in nature. Because the reassessment had not been completed, the assessee's failure to appeal against the remand order did not preclude challenge to the earlier findings in the appeal against the fresh assessment. The Tribunal was therefore required to examine those findings, and its refusal to do so was incorrect.

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Issues: Whether the assessee's failure to appeal against an earlier order of remand barred him from challenging the findings recorded in that order in the appeal against the fresh assessment, and whether such remand order was interlocutory in nature.

Analysis: The restriction in Section 105(2) of the Code of Civil Procedure was treated as a special rule confined to proceedings governed by that Code and not as a general principle applicable to tax appeals. The order of remand did not finally determine the assessment as a whole, because one material item of income was left open for fresh adjudication and the reassessment had yet to be completed. On that footing, the earlier findings were only part of the process leading to the final assessment and therefore bore the character of an interlocutory order. The absence of an appeal against the remand order did not, in the circumstances of this tax proceeding, foreclose challenge to those findings in the subsequent appeal.

Conclusion: The assessee was entitled to canvass the correctness of the earlier findings before the Tribunal, and the Tribunal's refusal to examine them was wrong.

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