1998 (12) TMI 85

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.... honorarium for the services rendered to an Organisation. The petitioner is living in Mulanthuruthy which comes within the urban agglomeration of Cochin. In this original petition, he has sought for a declaration declaring that the provisions contained under the proviso to section 139 of the Income-tax Act, 1961, are illegal and unconstitutional and for a direction not to implement the conditions ....

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....rous and uncalled for. Learned standing counsel appearing on behalf of the Income-tax Department submitted that the classification is reasonable and the object of widening the tax collection can be achieved only by this proviso. It is further submitted that filing of return is not onerous since it is now simplified. The proviso was introduced by the Finance Act, 1997, with effect from April 1, ....

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....his would only to help the Income-tax Department to assess whether a person is liable to pay income-tax. Though in some cases it may quite possibly happen that in spite of satisfying the conditions set out in the proviso, a person may not have assessable income. By the mere filing of the return, a person is not assessed. Probably from the experience gained during these years, the Department felt t....

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....ated that it is only an indicating factor to have a reasonable presumption that the person who is satisfying any of these two criteria will be having a taxable income. Therefore, these two conditions cannot altogether be discarded as having no nexus with the income. As rightly and fairly conceded by learned counsel for the petitioner that the other criteria, viz., ownership or lease of a motor veh....