TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2024 (11) TMI 1270
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.....Nos.192/Coch/2017 and 193/Coch/2019 pertaining to assessment years 2012-13 and 2015-16. 2. The brief facts necessary for disposal of these I.T. Appeals are as follows: The appellant is a company incorporated on 27.09.1996. The issue involved in these appeals is regarding the head of income under which the receipts of rent collected by the appellant in relation to leased property should be classified for the purposes of the Income Tax Act [hereinafter referred to as the "I.T. Act"]. The said classification has a bearing on the treatment to be accorded to the receipts obtained by the appellant consequent to the sale of some of the said properties. The appellant had been declaring the receipts as Income from House Property during the va....
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....nder the CBDT Circulars for the pursuit of the appeals. 4. Acting on the liberty so reserved to it, the Revenue moved a rectification application on 10.03.2020, pointing out that the assessment of the appellant for the assessment years in question was based on an audit objection and, therefore, an exceptional circumstance as envisaged in the CBDT Circulars. This contention was accepted by the Tribunal, which allowed the rectification application by an order dated 16.09.2022 and restored the appeals to its file. The Revenue's appeals were thereafter heard by the Appellate Tribunal, and by a common order dated 25.09.2023, the Tribunal allowed the appeals. It is against the said order of the Tribunal that the appellant/assessee is befor....
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....nge in classification of the head of income. It followed therefore that the income from sale of immovable properties had to be seen as 'capital gains' and not as 'business income' for the purposes of taxation. (ii) On the aspect of limitation, it is contended that the Appellate Tribunal could not have heard the Revenue's appeals on merits after having dismissed the appeals by relying the CBDT Circulars. While liberty was granted by the Tribunal to the Revenue to seek a restoration of the appeals under certain specified conditions, the liberty so granted could not extend the time limit prescribed under the I.T. Act for preferring restoration/rectification/recall petitions. It is pointed out that what the Revenue preferred....
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....nd the income earned therefrom, in the nature of business income. However, we are of the view that the requirement of ensuring uniformity and consistency in tax assessments cannot be overlooked, especially while categorizing the nature of the activity carried on by an assessee to earn its income for the purposes of taxation. In these appeals we are concerned with an assessee who has been consistently seen as deriving income from letting out house property owned by it. It is on that basis that it has been assessed in all the assessment years prior to, and subsequent to, the assessment years under consideration in these appeals. Merely for the reason that in the said assessment years, the assessee effected a sale of some of its properties, it....
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....1565]; Smt.Ujjam Bai v. State of Uttar Pradesh - [AIR 1962 SC 1621]]. Consequently, it could not have granted a liberty to the Revenue to file rectification applications to restore the appeals beyond the period permitted under the Statute. The time permitted for filing an application under Section 254 (2), for rectifying a mistake in an order passed by the Appellate Tribunal under Section 254 (1) is six months from the end of the month in which the order under Section 254 (1) was passed. In the instant cases, the applications under Section 254 (2) were preferred by the Revenue beyond the said period and it was these applications that the Appellate Tribunal allowed while restoring the appeals to file and passing final orders thereon against ....