2011 (6) TMI 712

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....rned Government Pleader appearing for the respondent and have also gone through the impugned orders including the appellate order issued by the VATAppellate Tribunal. Even though tax payable under the Act on the sales turnover of gold jewellery is only one per cent, still having regard to the value of the item, the incidence of tax is very heavy and consequently tax evasion is said to be very common in gold business in the State. According to the learned Government Pleader, the usual practice of tax evasion by gold dealers is by making unaccounted sales by issuing slips for the sales instead of raising invoices and the same is known to the Intelligence Wing of the Department of Commercial Taxes. When they doubted unaccounted sales by the p....

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....o evasion and liability for penalty but ordered some modification. In the second appeal filed by the petitioner, the Tribunal confirmed the order of the appellate authority against which the petitioner has come up with this revision before us. The first ground raised by the learned counsel for the petitioner against the order of the Tribunal is that the Tribunal went wrong in placing burden of proof on the petitioner that the slips recovered do not represent unaccounted purchase or sales. The learned Government Pleader, on the other hand, referred to the decision of this court relied on by the Tribunal in their order and contended that since the slips are recovered from the business premises of the dealer, it is for the dealer to explain t....

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....ve that all such sales are entered in the regular books which admittedly was not done because sales made by raising invoices only were accounted in books. We therefore do not find any justification to interfere with the order of the Tribunal casting burden of proof on the petitioner to establish that the entries in the seized slips are accounted in books of accounts because through the sample purchase the Department established the pattern of unaccounted sales made by the petitioner through slips. In the absence of proof of accounting these transactions in the regular books, the Tribunal rightly held that the entries in the seized slips represent unaccounted sales. We, therefore, reject the contention of the petitioner that the burden of es....