2025 (9) TMI 312

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....ompounding Order under Section 279(2) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 in terms of the Letter of Acceptance dated 29.01.2018, and thereby compound the criminal proceedings in CC No. 537821 of 2016 titled as 'Income Tax Office Vs. M/s Velvet Apple Hotel Pvt. Ltd.' pending before the Ld. ACCM (Spl. Acts), Central District, Tis Hazari Courts, Delhi, AND/OR B) Issue a Writ of Mandamus and/or Certiorari and quash/ set aside the Letter dated 08.02.2019 issued by the office of the Respondent No. 1 since the same is illegal and arbitrary,.." 2. In effect, the petitioner is seeking directions to the respondent not to pass a compounding order under Section 279(2) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (the Act) in terms of the Letter of Acceptanc....

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....petitioner is being arbitrarily asked to pay further charges @ 5% instead of 3% for the purpose of compounding, which are in fact not payable. 5. He stated that earlier the petitioner had filed an application for similar purpose of compounding the offence of non-deposit of TDS amount of Rs. 6,11,820/-. However, the said application was rejected by the respondent No. 1 vide its order dated 16.02.2016, since the petitioner was unable to deposit the compounding charges within the prescribed time period because of certain financial difficulties, the offence could not be compounded at this time. 6. Subsequently, after becoming financially capable the petitioner preferred another application dated 05.06.2017 for compounding of offence under....

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....is own wrong, having given false information against Column no. 10, that no application was earlier rejected. The same amounts to concealing information which could have been a relevant consideration for the competent authority in deciding the application. 10. In any case, it is his submission that as per the guidelines issued by the CBDT in the year 2014 which governs the issue in the case, this being the second application, the petitioner shall be liable to pay 5% as compounding charges and as such the claim of 5% of the respondents is justified. 11. He submitted that in any case, the request of compounding is not a matter of right but a discretion of the competent authority. The competent authority initially having exercised the di....

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....ed /Principal Officer 2. At Col No. 10 of Annexure-A i.e. whether similar offence in the case of the applicat have been compounded earlier. If yes. how many times-you have written-'No'. However, the facts reveals that Acceptance letter was issued vide this office letter F.No.CCIT(TDS)/DLI/Compounding/2014-15/891 dated 19/20.03.2015 and your compounding application filed on 13.11.2014 was rejected due to non-payment of compounding charges Rs. 5,70,047/- vide order u/s 279(2) dated 16.02.2016 for the same financial year. Hence, wrong information were furnished by you in Annexure-A II is your subsequent application for compounding of offence and not the first one. 3. Due to furnishing of wrong information in col. 10 of Annexu....

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....ffence under Direct Tax Law, 2014 issued by the Department of Revenue, CBDT, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, dated 23.12.2014. The same reads as under: "3% per month or part of a month of the amount of tax in default disclosed in the compounding application. After compounding of the said offence, if the same persons comes forward for compounding of such offence through any subsequent application, the applicable rate for compounding of such an offence will be 5% per month or part of a month of the amount of tax in default. The period of default for calculating compounding fee in the category shall be calculated from the date of deduction to the date of deposit of tax deducted at source as is done in respect of calculating ....