2023 (5) TMI 351

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....12.06.2017 passed under section 250 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 [hereinafter referred to as "the Act" for short] for the Asst. Year 2013-14. 2. At the outset, it was pointed out that the issue pertains to levy of penalty for concealing/furnishing inaccurate particulars of income as per the provisions of section 271(1)(c) of the Act and the assessee's appeal has been dismissed by the ld.CIT(A), as being invalid for the reason that the appeal had been filed manually while it was required to be filed electronically. 3. The ld.counsel for the assessee contended that as per the ld.CIT(A), CBDT had issued instruction vide notification No.S.O.637(E) dated 1.3.2016 mandating compulsory filing of the return w.e.f. 1.3.2016 for those required t....

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.... stated that even otherwise, on merit, the penalty levied needed to be deleted since even on merits the addition made in the case of the assessee had been deleted by the ITAT in entirety vide its order dated 30.10.2015 in ITA No.757/RJT/2014. The ld.DR fairly admitted to this fact. 5. We have heard both the parties. We find that the dismissal by the ld.CIT(A) of the assessee's appeal filed before it manually was highly unjustifiable and was not even in accordance with the notification issued by the CBDT No.S.O.637(E) dated 1.3.2016 as referred to by the ld.CIT(A) himself. As per the said notification, as noted in para 1.2 of the CIT(A)'s order, all assesses whose returns were required to be filed electronically, had to file their appeals....

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....T(A) dismissing the assessee's appeal as not admitted is set aside. 6. On merits of the case, it is an admitted fact that the addition on which penalty was levied under section 271(1)(c) of the Act was deleted by the ITAT. We have noted from the assessment order, and copy of the penalty order before us that the assessee, being an agent of freight beneficiary M/s LR2 Management K/s -Denmark, had filed various voyage final returns under section 172(3) of the Act without paying freight taxes. The assessee had claimed DTAA benefit vis a vis Denmark for the said purpose, but the AO held that the assessee had wrongly claimed DTAA benefit and accordingly withdrew the same. Thus, 7.5% of the total freight earned in India by the assessee was trea....