TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1988 (3) TMI 2
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....ng of the assessee and his daughter ? (2) Whether, on the facts and circumstances of the case, the movable and immovable properties that, as a result of the said partitions, fall to the share of the assessee constituted not his separate property but the joint property of the said Hindu undivided family ? (3) Whether, on the facts and in the circumstances of the case, the Tribunal was right in law in holding that the income earned from the aforesaid properties during the year under consideration was taxable in the hands of the Hindu undivided family comprised of the assessee and his daughter ?" which have been referred to us by the Tribunal under section 256(1) of the Income-tax Act. A few relevant facts leading to this reference....
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....perty and that his daughter, Aditi, would have no right therein. The assessee went up in appeal to the Appellate Assistant Commissioner. The Appellate Assistant Commissioner, following the principles laid down by the Supreme Court and various High Courts in the decisions referred to before him, held that the assessee was entitled to claim the status of Hindu undivided family in respect of the properties received by him on partial partition and that the Income-tax Officer was not justified in including the income received by the appellant on partial partition in the individual income of the appellant-assessee. The Revenue went up in appeal to the Tribunal against the said decision of the Appellate Assistant Commissioner. The Tribunal n....
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..... Ultimately, the Tribunal came to the conclusion that the income from the property failing to the share of the assessee was assessable in the hands of the assessee's undivided family consisting of himself and his daughter and, accordingly, the Department's appeal was dismissed. As noted earlier, at the instance of the Revenue, the three questions earlier extracted have been referred by the Tribunal for our opinion. At the time of hearing of this reference, various decisions of the Supreme Court and other High Courts including this court were cited before us. From these decisions, a legal position has clearly emerged to the effect that even while a person who was earlier a member of the Hindu undivided family receives property on partiti....
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....r of the properties from joint properties belonging to Hindu undivided family into the absolute properties of the son. The properties were, therefore, liable to be assessed in the hands of the son as properties of a Hindu undivided family and income received from them was also liable to be taxed in the hands of the son as income of the Hindu undivided family. If the Hindu undivided family can consist of a brother and his unmarried sisters as per the aforesaid decision, it necessarily follows that father and his unmarried daughter can also form Hindu undivided family and income of such family can be brought to tax as income of a Hindu undivided family. In our view, the aforesaid decision of this court squarely answers the questions posed ....
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....n the same sense in which a Hindu joint family is understood in the personal law of Hindus. It must, therefore, be held that the assessee in the present case did constitute a joint Hindu family along with his unmarried daughter at the relevant time and it cannot be said that the joint family had ceased to exist as far as these two members were concerned. Mr. Raval, for the Department, however, placed great store on a later decision of the Supreme Court in the case of C. Krishna Prasad v. CIT [1974] 97 ITR 493. So far as the aforesaid decision is concerned, the Supreme Court was concerned with a situation in which the assessee along with his brother and father had formed a Hindu undivided family up to October 30, 1958, when there was a pa....