Section 85(3A) of the Finance Act, 1994 requires appeals to the Commissioner (Appeals) to be filed within two months, with delay condonable on sufficient cause only for a further month. An appeal filed more than twelve months after receipt of the adjudication order falls outside this aggregate three-month period. The statutory limitation restricts the Commissioner (Appeals)' power to condone delay, and neither the Tribunal's appellate jurisdiction nor general appellate provisions can override that express limit. Such an appeal is barred by limitation and cannot be entertained or condoned.

Commission-based marketing and order-procurement services supplied to foreign principals qualify as exports where the foreign principal engages the Indian provider, pays the commission in convertible foreign exchange, and uses the services for its own business. Under the place-of-provision rules, the recipient is the person whose instructions are acted on, business need is met, and consideration is borne; Indian customers affected by the performance are not recipients merely because they place orders. The service destination is determined by consumption, not performance location. Extended limitation cannot apply where service-tax returns disclosed the export activity and no positive evidence establishes wilful suppression or intent to evade tax.

Tariff-classification differences, where Bills of Entry accurately disclose the goods and material particulars, do not by themselves constitute misdeclaration supporting confiscation or redemption fine. For the relevant period, IGST imports lacked a statutory basis for interest or penalties; the later extension of those consequences applied prospectively. Goods removed from a Special Economic Zone to the Domestic Tariff Area were chargeable, but no recovery machinery supported the identified short-levy and consequential punitive demands. Extended limitation and related penalties require collusion, wilful misstatement or suppression with intent to evade duty; absent those elements, liability is confined to the normal period, with interest only on basic customs duty and social welfare surcharge. Quantification and consequential adjustments require remand.

Customs brokers may adopt a bona fide, plausible tariff classification during self-assessment when it is supported by documents available at clearance. Their duty to advise clients requires diligent declarations, while due diligence requires reasonable care in information provided; neither requires predicting a later departmental view on a debatable classification. Where competing tariff entries are plausible and there is no false factual declaration, knowledge of misdeclaration, inaccurate information, or connivance, the broker does not breach these obligations. Licence revocation, security forfeiture, and penalty cannot rest solely on subsequent departmental disagreement with the classification.

The first proviso to Section 129A(1) of the Customs Act excludes appellate jurisdiction over orders concerning goods imported or exported as passenger baggage. Gold brought into India by an international passenger remains baggage even if recovered from the passenger's trouser pocket rather than luggage. Non-declaration or concealment allegations concern the merits of confiscation and penalty and do not alter the statutory jurisdictional exclusion. Maintainability depends on the nature of the goods and transaction, not the relief sought. The applicable remedy for a baggage-related confiscation order lies in revision under Section 129DD before the competent Revisional Authority.

Section 123 of the Customs Act shifts the burden of proving lawful acquisition only after seizure on a reasonable belief of smuggling founded on relevant material. Domestic courier transport and absent documents may justify investigation but, without proof of illegal importation or a valid presumption, do not establish that gold is smuggled. Confiscation based on concealment, unauthorised removal, or prohibited import requires the respective statutory conditions to be independently met. Penalty for dealing in smuggled goods requires an identified act or omission making goods confiscable and knowledge or reason to believe; jewellery trading and undocumented transport alone are insufficient. Confiscation and personal penalty were set aside, with consequential relief to follow.

Rectification proceedings initiated and decided in the name of an entity dissolved before the notice and order are invalid where the assessing authority had been informed of the dissolution. An order against a non-existent entity constitutes substantive illegality, not a procedural defect capable of cure under the statutory saving provision. Participation in the proceedings cannot validate the order, because estoppel cannot operate against law. The rectification order is therefore a nullity and must be quashed.

Section 69A requires cash-deposit explanations to be assessed against available evidence and the preponderance of probabilities. Verified earlier bank withdrawals may support a cash-flow explanation where no evidence shows that the withdrawn cash was non-genuine, spent, or otherwise deployed; suspicion based on cash retention, withdrawal frequency, or demonetisation-period deposits is insufficient. Section 68 applies only to credits recorded in books of account maintained by the taxpayer. Bank-account or passbook entries alone do not constitute such books. Taxation under section 115BBE and consequential interest depend on a sustainable addition for unexplained money or credits.

Section 269SS prohibits accepting specified loans or deposits in cash, and section 271D imposes a penalty for breach. Relief under section 273B requires the assessee to establish reasonable cause. A spousal or family arrangement does not remove each spouse's independent tax obligations. Where both spouses had banking facilities, an earlier loan was advanced by cheque, and no explanation justified later cash acceptance, reasonable cause is not established. Repayment by cheque does not cure the breach, because the contravention occurs on acceptance of the cash loan or deposit; the penalty therefore remains sustainable.

Binding interim judicial directions that precluded Leave Travel Concession payments from being treated as employee income for tax-deduction purposes suspended any enforceable obligation to deduct tax under section 192 during their operation. An employer complying with those directions could not be treated as an assessee in default under section 201(1) for non-deduction on those payments. Accordingly, the related tax demand was liable to be deleted.

Section 270A treats under-reported income arising from misreporting as distinct from ordinary under-reporting. A penalty notice is not defective where the assessment record and notice clearly allege misreporting, even without identifying a specific misreporting sub-category. Under-reporting may arise when assessed income under normal provisions exceeds processed-return income, notwithstanding unchanged deemed income. Claiming a full deduction where only a partial deduction is available, coupled with inconsistent deduction disclosures and a post-notice revised computation without a revised return, may negate a bona fide explanation. Absence of additional deemed-income tax or intent to evade does not preclude misreporting penalty. Statutory approval obtained through faceless assessment satisfies the prior-approval requirement.

Peak Credit Theory requires merged undisclosed bank accounts to account for corresponding debit and credit entries arising from inter-account transfers together. Contra entries merely move funds between accounts and cannot be treated as fresh deposits that inflate the taxable peak balance. A remand for recomputation on this basis restricts the unexplained-bank-deposit addition to the correctly calculated merged peak. An addition for rental income that was deleted in an earlier round and left undisturbed cannot be reintroduced in set-aside proceedings, because the remand does not revive issues that have attained finality.

Consumer-side electricity tariffs actually paid by receiving cement units to independent distribution companies may constitute valid internal comparable uncontrolled prices for captive-power transfers. Selection under the CUP method requires transaction-specific comparability and the most appropriate method. Functional and risk differences between captive generators and distribution licensees do not preclude use of consumer tariffs where those tariffs are contemporaneous prices available to the receiving units from independent suppliers. Generator-side procurement rates reflect a different supply-chain stage and cannot replace consumer-side rates without showing availability to the receiving units. Accordingly, transfer-pricing adjustments based on generator-side rates are unsustainable.

Functional integration of electrical installations with manufacturing plant and machinery supports eligibility for additional depreciation. Transformers, transformer-connectivity panel boards, metal and spark detectors, and yarn-conditioning machinery qualify as integral assets where they are indispensable to manufacturing and functionally inseparable from the plant. Allowance of regular depreciation applicable to plant and machinery on the same assets reinforces that classification. Consistent treatment of materially identical facts supports the additional depreciation claim.

Foreign tax credit under section 90 and an applicable Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement remains available where foreign income is disclosed and documentary evidence establishes payment of foreign taxes. Belated filing of Form No. 67 is a procedural lapse that does not, by itself, defeat the credit claim when substantive eligibility conditions are fulfilled. Accordingly, foreign tax credit should not be denied solely because Form No. 67 was filed after the prescribed time.

Concealment penalty under section 271(1)(c) is not sustainable merely because taxable income is computed by applying an estimated profit rate after deletion of an unexplained-expenditure addition. Estimated assessment, without a clear finding that the taxpayer concealed income or furnished inaccurate particulars, does not meet the statutory conditions for penalty. The same principle applies to penalty linked to income from house property where the required concealment conditions are not established. Penalty must rest on proof of concealment or inaccurate particulars, rather than the fact of an addition or estimation alone.

Higher depreciation under section 32(1) and Appendix I applies to motor lorries used in the business of running them on hire. Dumpers and tippers deployed to excavate, load, transport and dump minerals and overburden under integrated composite mining contracts satisfy that condition where the materials belong to mine owners and transportation is performed under contractual obligations. CBDT circulars distinguish a business of transporting goods on hire from a non-hiring business, and the treatment does not extend to merely occasional hiring or vehicles used only ancillary to another principal business. Such dumpers and tippers qualify for depreciation at 30%.

Reassessment under Section 147 requires recorded reasons based on fresh tangible material with a rational nexus to a belief that income escaped assessment; conclusive proof is unnecessary at the notice stage. Where reopening occurs after four years from a completed assessment, the proviso additionally requires a prima facie basis for failure to make full and true disclosure of material facts. A mere change of opinion cannot justify reassessment and requires that an opinion was consciously formed during the original assessment. Investigation findings on share overvaluation, property acquisition, capital-gains adjustments and deductions may constitute fresh material where no prior opinion is evident, including under Section 143(1).

Complete non-issuance of the mandatory notice under Section 143(2) cannot be cured by Section 292BB, which addresses only defective, delayed, or improper service of a notice actually issued. An assessee's participation in reassessment proceedings does not confer jurisdiction to complete a reassessment without that notice. Treating an earlier return as the return furnished in response to a notice under Section 148 does not remove the requirement to issue notice under Section 143(2). A letter under Section 142(1) cannot substitute for the mandatory scrutiny notice. Reassessments completed without notice under Section 143(2) are therefore invalid.

Manpower supply without any supply of goods constitutes pure services for GST purposes. Exemption for pure services connected with functions entrusted to municipalities requires satisfaction of every condition, including supply to the prescribed recipient and an established nexus with a municipal function. Personnel labels such as "Sweeper" or "Paryavaran Mitra", contractual GST clauses, and a recipient's non-levy request do not determine eligibility. Where the contract and supporting material do not identify a separable sanitation-related supply satisfying those conditions, the municipal-function exemption is unavailable. The non-exempt manpower outsourcing service is taxable under its applicable classification at 18% for intra-State supply.