TaxTMI 
TaxTMI 
2026 (4) TMI 1106
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....t dated 31-3-2021 was admittedly issued to the Assessee on 1-4-2021 as evident from the screen shot of Income Tax Portal and hence the procedure prescribed under section 148A of the Act ought to have been followed by the Learned AO which had not been admittedly followed thereby vitiating the entire reassessment proceedings. 3. We have heard the rival submissions and perused the materials available on record. The Assessee is a private limited company and had filed its original return of income under section 139(1) of the Act on 24-10-2017 declaring nil income. In the instant case, Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) had identified that during the financial year 2016-17, the Assessee deposited cash of Rs 18,72,500 in Punjab National Bank, Aligarh branch during the demonetization period and that the source of cash remained unexplained. Accordingly, based on this information, the case of the Assessee was sought to be reopened by the Learned AO under section 147 of the Act vide notice under section 148 of the Act dated 31-3-2021 which was issued to the Assessee only on 1-4-2021 which is evident from screenshot of the income tax portal. The screenshot of the income tax portal is....
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....prescribed under section 148A of the Act. The short point that arises for our consideration is as to whether the notice under section 148 of the Act dated 31-3-2021 issued to the assessee on 1-4-2021 by e-mail without following the mandatory provisions under section 148A of the Act would have to be construed as bad in law and liable to be quashed or not. In this regard, the learned AR placed reliance on the decision of Hon'ble Jurisdictional High Court in the case of Rajesh Chopra vs ITO reported in 2025 (6) TMI 83 (Del HC) in W.P. (C ) 12561/2022 dated 28-5-2025. In that case, notice under section 148A(b) of the Act was issued on 30-5-2022 calling the petitioner to file a reply on or before 13-06-2022. The petitioner in that case stated that for assessment year 2013-14, the time limit for framing the re-assessment order had expired on 31-03-2022 being the period of 12 months from the date on which the notice under section 148 of the Act was initially issued. The Revenue Authorities in that case claimed that the notice under Section 148 of the Act dated 31-3-2021 was in fact issued on 1-4-2021 and therefore is required to be treated as a show-cause notice under Section 148A(b) of t....
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....Further, a perusal of the compliance affidavit reveals that while the function of generation of notice on Income Tax Business Application portal and digital signing of the notice is executed by the jurisdictional Assessing Officer, the function of drafting of the e-mail to which the notice is attached and triggering the e-mail to the assessee is performed by the Income Tax Business Application e-mail software system. Thus, mere generation of notice on the Income Tax Business Application screen cannot in fact or in law constitute issue of notice, whether the notice is issued in paper form or electronic form. In case of paper form, the notice must be despatched by post on or before March 31, 2021 and for communication in electronic form the e-mail should have been despatched on or before March 31, 2021. In the present writ petitions, the despatch by post and e- mail was carried out on or after April 1, 2021 and therefore, we hold that, the impugned notices were not issued on March 31, 2021. ***** 25.18. Additionally, the contention of the counsel for the Department that generation of section 148 notice on the Income Tax Business Application screen amounts to "issued" with....
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.... ".. . However, it has been brought to the notice of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (the Board) that there have been some instances in which the notice, order, summons, letter and any correspondence (hereinafter referred to as 'communication') were found to have been issued manually, without maintaining a proper audit trail of such communication. 2. In order to prevent such instances and to maintain proper audit trail of all communication, the Board in exercise of power under section 119 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (hereinafter referred to as 'the Act'), has decided that no communication shall be issued by any Income-tax authority relating to assessment, appeals, orders, statutory or otherwise, exemptions, enquiry, investigation, verification of information, penalty, prosecution, rectification, approval etc. to the assessee or any other person, on or after October 1, 2019 unless a computer-generated document identification number (DIN) has been allotted and is duly quoted in the body of' such communication." (emphasis supplied) In fact, in several cases, we take judicial notice that even as on date the jurisdictional Assessin....