TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1930 (5) TMI 11
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....155; property, Rs. 1,795; other sources, Rs. 5,000; making in all Rs. 17,950. In connexion with the assessment for the next year, namely, 1927-1928 the assessees produced certain accounts from which the Income Tax Officer was of opinion that in the previous year income under the heads business and property had partially escaped assessment. Accordingly, under Section 34 of the Act, he issued a notice stating that he had reason to believe that their income from money-lending and house property, chargeable to Income Tax in the year ending 31st March 1927, had partially escaped assessment and that he proposed to assess the income that had escaped assessment and requiring the assessees to deliver a return of their income from all sources chargea....
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....this revenue being agricultural. 3. The Income Tax authorities have held that this contention cannot be raised in the present proceedings under Section 34; that these proceedings were for the purpose of assessing income from money-lending business and house property which had partially escaped assessment; that the question whether the assessees collections from their zamindaries are or are not, to the extent claimed, agricultural income, has nothing to do with the question whether the original assessment was too low in respect of their money-lending business or their property, i.e., buildings or lands appurtenant thereto : cf. Section 9. 4. The question which has been referred to us is stated as follows: When an assessment ma....
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....ken under Section 34 cannot give rise to a right in the assessee to make a claim for a refund, and that the Income Tax authorities may at any time abandon the proceedings under this section, he contends that such proceedings entitle the assessee to show that while income under one head may have escaped assessment, income under another head had been over-assessed; in other words, that the whole assessment may be reopened at the option of the assessee who may show what the real truth as to his total income is. 7. This controversy must be determined, if possible, upon the words of the section which are as follows: If for any reason income, profits or gains chargeable to Income Tax has escaped assessment in any year or has been asse....
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....ssess it. In the present case the assessee's income from their business is found to have been Rs. 28,787 of which all but Rs. 11,155 has escaped assessment; and their income from property is found to have been Rs. 3,071 of which the excess over Rs. 1,795 has escaped assessment. I do not think that it can be said in such a case as this that the sums which represent the difference, i.e., Rs. 17,632 and Rs. 1,276, are not income which has escaped assessment because the assessees have been charged too much in respect of the zamindari collections. 9. If the question of the zamindari collections was in any way intermixed with the question of the profits in the money-lending business, or the question of the assessee's property within th....
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....r refusing to the assessee a right to reopen the whole matter. Nor is it for the Court to consider whether there is any real injustice or inconvenience in refusing this right to an assessee who has failed to make a return. Such considerations are questions of policy and debatable as such. As a matter of the true construction of this section it appears to me that if the legislature had meant to say that if in any case it appears to the Income Tax Officer that an assessee has been assessed upon too low a figure or at too low a rate, the Income Tax Officer may issue a fresh notice under Section 22(2) and may proceed to reassess such assessee afresh, the language employed would have been noticeably different from that which we find in the prese....