TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2018 (7) TMI 1320
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....r; The petitioner is an individual. Pursuant to a search action u/s.132 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 ("the Act", for short) carried out at the residence and office premises of the petitioner in September/October 1993, assessment proceedings for the relevant Assessment Years of the block period commenced. The petitioner applied for settlement of the cases before the Settlement Commission by filing an application on 27.10.1995. During the pendency of such proceedings, Section 243D of the Act was amended by which a person, who has applied for settlement, was required to pay tax with interest latest by 31.07.2007. The Department raised dispute about the petitioner having discharged such liability. The Settlement Commission accepted the Depart....
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.... and that too at the suggestion of the departmental authorities. The revised offers should not be seen as a failure on the part of the petitioner to make true disclosures at the outset. Counsel lastly contended that in any case, such revised disclosures pertained to only two Assessment Years, i.e. 1991­92 and 1992­93. The Settlement Commission, therefore, in any case, could not have rejected the application for settlement for the A.Y. 1993­94 and 1994­95. Heavy reliance was placed on the decision of this Court in the case of Ashish Prafulbhai Patel v. Income Tax Settlement Commission and others, 251 Taxmann.com 441, to canvass that application for settlement would be separate and distinct for each year. 5. We have heard l....
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....sfer the lands to such buyers. If there are any Banakhat right holders or other intermediaries, they would be shown as confirming parties. In this background, the petitioner had made the disclosures in the settlement application and had offered different amounts to tax for the said four Assessment Years, i.e. A.Y. 1991­92 to 1994­95. 7. The Settlement Commission noted that during the search action, the petitioner had disclosed an amount of Rs. 43.00 Lakhs having been invested in the AOP. As against that the petitioner had filed the settlement application disclosing additional income of Rs. 32.97 Lakhs. The Department had all along opposed the theory of existence of the AOP. In this context, the Settlement Commission recorded that....
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....expenditures. The petitioner came up with yet another revised disclosure under letter dated 17.05.2017, which was based on the cash flow chart prepared on the basis of seized documents. The petitioner owned up the entire amount of Rs. 3,05,500/­ for A.Y. 1991­92 and Rs. 24.81 Lakhs for A.Y. 1992­93. The petitioner filed yet another letter dated 01.06.2017 before the Settlement Commission and sought to distance himself from the income of the AOP, which he had earlier agreed to show proportionately on the ground that the other member of the AOP, i.e. N.K. Patel, had not agreed to that modality. Under the said letter dated 01.06.2017, therefore, the petitioner made final offer of additional income of Rs. 68.02 Lakhs by way of settl....
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....hifted his stand, either on the quantum of undisclosed income or its source. On certain occasions, the Department brought out discrepancies in the disclosures, which forced the petitioner to make further revised offers for settlement. After making such revised offers on multiple attempts, the petitioner took a complete 'U' turn and sought to delete certain income from his disclosures on the ground that, till then, he had taken into account his share of the AOP in question. However, the other member of the AOP refused to accept such a formula. The petitioner would, therefore also, downwardly revise his income offered through settlement, which was impermissible. Irrespective of the stand of the other member of the AOP, the petitioner had made....
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....ach year would be separate and distinct. It was a case in which the petitioner had challenged the vires of Section 245D(2A) of the Act, besides other machinery provisions, essentially arguing that failure to pay tax along with interest by 31.07.2007 in settlement cases where applications were already filed by the time the statute was amended with a consequence of abatement of the settlement application was unconstitutional. The petitioner had also challenged the order of Settlement Commission on merits, by which the petitioner's request for continuing with the settlement offer for the years during which full tax with interest was already paid, was also rejected by the Settlement Commission on the ground that no such dissection could be made....