TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1967 (7) TMI 116
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....Madras General Sales Tax Act, 1939, for the year 1958-59. The assessment order was dated 24th March, 1961. The Madras General Sales Tax Act, 1959, repealed the earlier Act and commenced to operate from Ist April, 1959. Disputing the turnover of Rs. 2, 91,187.95, the assessee filed an appeal in respect of it before the Appellate Assistant Commissioner of Commercial Taxes, who Is, by section 31 of the new Act, constituted as the appellate authority. This officer found a case for enhancement of the turnover, and, after notice calling for objections, enhanced the turnover fixing it at a sum of Rs. 19,56,500. He overruled the assessee's contention that he had no jurisdiction to enhance. The assessee, in his further appeal to the Tribunal under s....
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....y recast section 61 and substituted it by an entirely new section. Under the old Act, an appeal lay to the Commercial Tax Officer from an order of assessment and a further appeal to the Sales Tax Appellate Tribunal. These appeals could be preferred only by the assessee and not by the revenue. Where no appeal had been filed and the time for filing had expired, the Commercial Tax Officer, above him the Deputy Commissioner of Commercial Taxes and at the top the Board of Revenue were each invested with powers of revision which could be exercised on an application or suo motu. It was settled by decisions of this Court that in the appeals filed by an assessee the relative appellate authority had no power to enhance the turnover. If the revenue fe....
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....n filed by the State in this Court was allowed. This Court, in one part of its judgment, observed: "The immunity or protection which the assessee had under the 1939 Act so as to save the assessment made by the Deputy Commercial Tax Officer, the primary assessing authority, from being enhanced by the exercise of the appellate power by the Commercial Tax Officer, is a vested right, which cannot be interfered with or in any way impaired having regard to the specific provision of section 61(1) of the Madras Act 1 of 1959." But having said that, the Court was of the view: "We cannot accede to the contention of the learned counsel for the respondent that any vested right accrued to the assessee on the date of the first assessment order by t....
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....ndaram and Company[1963] 14 S.T.C. 996. was also a case in which an appeal pending before the Commercial Tax Officer was transferred to the Appellate Assistant Commissioner under section 61(2) of the new Act. This officer enhanced the turnover while disposing the appeal. The same Division Bench which decided Deputy Commissioner of Commercial Taxes v. Sri Swami and Company[1962] 13 S.T.C. 468. held that the assessee had a vested right at the time when the 1959 Act came into force to prevent the Commercial Tax Officer from enhancing the assessment in the course of the appeal preferred by him but there was at the same time the peril of the Commercial Tax Officer who had revisional power of making an order prejudicial to the assessee in exercis....