TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2021 (5) TMI 589
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....s' from rental income. 2. The Ld. AR advanced argument in support of assessee's claim and relied upon various decisions of this Tribunal, a copy of which has been placed on record. It was urged that gross rent received by the assessee included society maintenance charges which were to be paid by the assessee. Therefore, in computing the annual value, the amount of rent which actually goes into the hands of the owner should be taken into consideration since the provisions of Sec. 23(1)(b) uses the expression actual rent received or receivable by the owner. The Ld. DR, on the other hand, submitted that the assessee's claim is not admissible as per statutory provisions. We have carefully considered the same. Our adjudication to the su....
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....us. 5. Upon perusal of clause-9 of Leave & License agreement dated 15/11/2004 entered into by the assessee with one of the Licensee, we find the assessee as a licensor was liable to pay municipal taxes and any outgoings and any further increase thereof to the respective and appropriate local authority / organizations save and except electricity, water and telephone connection / usage charges in respect of the licensed premises. The licensee is obligated to pay lump sum license fees to the assessee. The assessee is also providing certain amenities and facilities of varied nature to the users under separate agreement against lump sum monthly payment as well as against interest free security deposit. All these charges have been offered as w....
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....to the hands of the assessee is only to be considered, would enable the assessee to claim any expenditure from rent actually received or receivable since the same would ultimately reduce the amount which actually goes into the hands of the assessee. The same is not the intention of the legislatures. The statutory provisions, as noted earlier, provide for deduction of specified items only. 8. Proceeding further, we are of the considered opinion that the 'society maintenance charges' as paid by the assessee, by no stretch of imagination, could be held to be taxes paid to local authority. This view has already been expressed by this very bench in the case of Sterling & Wilson Property Developers Pvt. Ltd. V/s ITO (ITA NO.1085/Mum/2015 dated....
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....for deduction with respect to taxes levied by any local authority. Therefore, society maintenance charges levied by the Society which is not a local authority are not at all allowable to the assessee. Therefore, we held so and accordingly, maintenance charges of four flats amounting to Rs. 1,68,072/- are not allowable under the head 'Income from House Property'. Further, the assessee has contended that Godown has been used by assessee for business purposes and therefore, we restore this matter to file of AO for limited purpose of verifying assessee's claim that the godown was used for business purpose during impugned AY or not and if so, allow the deduction for municipal taxes under the head 'Business Income'. So far as regarding, municipal....