TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
1982 (3) TMI 55
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....y, 1972. But the petitioner did not do so. The estimate happened to be filed six days later. The time-limit for filing an advance tax estimate is laid down by s. 212. No grace days are permitted. Nor does the Act empower the ITO or any other authority to condone the delay even on sufficient cause shown. The obligation to file the estimate is inexorable and absolute. Since the petitioner did not file the estimate in time, the ITO levied a penalty of Rs. 7,675. The penalty was confirmed by the Commissioner in revision. In this writ petition, Mr. K. C. Rajappa for the petitioner urged that the penalty action under s. 273 of the Act is a power coupled with a duty. He contended that in this case there had been a failure on the part of the ....
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....t of the offence and the placement of the onus under the section. The offence is not just a default; it must be a default without reasonable cause. The onus is not on the assessee to show that there was a reasonable cause for his default; the onus, on the contrary, is on the officer to show that the assessee's default was without a reasonable cause. There is quite a difference between the two. In the course of the penalty proceedings the petitioner offered an explanation as to why the advance tax estimate could not be filed in time. The ITO remarked that the explanation was " not completely satisfactory ". The Commissioner, in revision, dealt with the explanation in some detail, but he too observed that there were " no merits " in it. Th....
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....s, he cannot levy any penalty either. What is more, he cannot make up for the deficiency in the evidence before him, by calling for an explanation from the assessee and then rejecting it either summarily or by picking holes in it. Section 273 does not empower the officer to levy penalty if the assessee offers no explanation for not filing the estimate in time. Nor can the officer do so by rejecting the explanation, where one is offered, on the ground that he considers it unsatisfactory. We have in the I.T. Act, a few sections wherein the ITO's action in one direction or another is made to depend on the absence of an explanation from the assessee, or on the officer's rejection of the assessee's explanation as unsatisfactory. See ss. 68, 69, ....
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....cular rise in the paper's sales had begun even in October of the year. Hence, according to the Commissioner, the petitioner should have been in a position to file the estimate within time, by 15th December. Mr. Jayaraman, learned standing counsel for the department, referred to this conclusion in the Commissioner's order and submitted that it showed a proper sense of direction in the matter of levy of penalty under s. 273. We do not think so. The pertinent point made by the petitioner in its explanation was that the sudden rise in the paper's circulation put the petitioner's organization under tension and, in the process, made the petitioner miss the time-limit for filing the advance tax estimate. The Commissioner, however, did not adver....