Refund of Special Additional Duty under the exemption mechanism in Notification No. 102/2007-Cus is available on fulfilment of conditions including subsequent sale and payment of applicable sales tax or VAT. Section 27 of the Customs Act prescribes limitation for refund claims but does not cover Special Additional Duty. A one-year limitation, introduced by Notification No. 93/2008-Cus and calculated from payment of that duty, extends the statutory limitation framework to a duty outside Section 27 and restricts a substantive refund right without statutory amendment. Consequently, that one-year limitation is inapplicable to Special Additional Duty refund claims.

Condonation of delay in customs appeals requires sufficient cause, assessed through bona fides, diligence and a satisfactory explanation for the entire period of delay. A High Court appeal under the Customs Act is confined to substantial questions of law and cannot revisit factual findings unless they are perverse, unsupported by evidence or reached by ignoring material evidence. Participation through counsel, email service on counsel, attempted dispatch to the recorded address and notice-board display supported the finding that prolonged inaction remained unexplained. Refusal to condone the delay therefore disclosed neither perversity nor a substantial question of law.

For unabated assessments under section 153A, completed assessments may be disturbed only through additions based on incriminating material found during the search. Additions for cash payments, tax-deduction defaults, expenses, credits and negative cash balances cannot rest solely on disclosed books, special-audit observations or uncorroborated investigation statements where no seized document, record or electronic evidence directly supports them. The identified additions therefore lacked the required jurisdictional foundation and were deleted.

Statutory housing activities providing accommodation, particularly to lower-income and weaker sections, fall within advancement of an object of general public utility. Charging consideration for residential units, plots and allied activities does not by itself amount to trade, commerce or business under the proviso to section 2(15). The decisive inquiry is whether charges substantially exceed cost, administrative expenses and a nominal mark-up for reasonable growth, indicating a profit motive. Section 11(4A) applies consistently to incidental business activity. Exemption under section 11 depends on verification of the pricing structure and remains available where no profit element is established.

Transfer-pricing benchmarking must select the most appropriate method through a functional, asset and risk analysis. The Transactional Net Margin Method is appropriate where an importer performs package configuration, integration, installation, software activation, training, warranty, maintenance and technical support, rather than acting as a routine reseller. The Resale Price Method becomes unreliable when the reseller adds substantial value or transforms the goods, particularly where no defect is shown in the operating-margin analysis. Comparable companies require verification where their related party transactions may exceed the applicable filter. Claimed duplicate taxation of income already offered in the return also requires verification before retention of any addition.

Capital-gains exemption requires investment in a company incorporated within the prescribed statutory period. Commencement of business or manufacturing, acquisition of plant and machinery, and MSME registration during that period do not substitute for the company's legal incorporation date. Although the provision is incentive-based, beneficial interpretation cannot displace an unambiguous eligibility condition; the claimant must fall squarely within the exemption. Investment in a company incorporated before the prescribed period remains ineligible even if the company was dormant and began operations later, so the exemption is unavailable.

The APA under section 92CC governs recomputation of transfer-pricing adjustments for covered AMP expenditure, royalty, service-warranty charges and management-related expenses, using the prescribed Other Method and arm's length price mechanism. Expatriate salaries are deductible as business expenditure where expatriates work exclusively under the taxpayer's control and supervision and are remunerated by it. Royalty paid to parent entities is not capital expenditure where consistently accepted in earlier years and covered by the APA. Scientifically and rationally determined service-warranty provisions are deductible. The Indo-Korea DTAA claim concerning dividend distribution tax requires action after final Supreme Court adjudication on DDT's nature and treaty treatment.

Penalty for under-reporting income consequent to misreporting was not leviable where income omitted from the original return was fully disclosed in the return filed in response to notice under section 148. Although filing the return only after reassessment notice ordinarily brought the income within under-reporting provisions, the bona fide explanation exclusion applied. Salary and deposit-interest income had substantially suffered tax deduction at source, and the taxpayer's overseas employment and bona fide belief that the employer had filed the original return were supported by material facts. The penalty under section 270A was therefore directed to be deleted.

Transfer-pricing comparability for software development services may apply an upper turnover filter of ten times the tested party's turnover. Material scale differences can affect the functions, assets and risks profile because significantly larger companies may benefit from economies of scale, stronger market position, valuable intangibles and diversified operations. Consistency with an earlier-year determination supports retaining the filter where facts and law remain unchanged. Companies exceeding the ten-times threshold should be excluded from the comparable set, and the arm's length price should be recomputed after allowing the assessee an opportunity to be heard.

Settlement of a quantum dispute under the Direct Tax Vivad Se Vishwas Scheme does not immunise an independent penalty for failure to obtain a tax audit, because scheme immunity is confined to matters covered by the declaration. Tax-audit applicability for futures and options transactions requires turnover to be computed using favourable and unfavourable differences, option premium and reverse-trade differences rather than delivery-trading methods. Where the transaction nature and turnover particulars are not established, the tax-audit obligation and consequential penalty require fresh factual determination after the taxpayer provides relevant supporting material.

Addition based on an alleged fall in net profit rate was unsustainable because the assessment incorrectly treated the declared rate as 0.35% instead of the audited net profit rate of 46.99%. The audited financial results showed increased profitability compared with the preceding year, making the comparison underlying the addition factually incorrect. The addition founded on the erroneous net profit-rate comparison was deleted.

Approved resolution plans under Section 31 of the Insolvency and Bankruptcy Code, 2016 bind governmental and statutory authorities. Where a plan expressly covers affiliates and subsidiaries, requires withdrawal or dismissal of tax proceedings for periods before approval, extinguishes related liabilities, and bars contrary governmental or quasi-judicial action, pending income-tax proceedings for that period cannot continue. The clean slate principle applies where tax authorities participated in the insolvency process and their objections were rejected. Subsequent approval of such a plan may also support additional grounds or a Rule 27 plea before the Tribunal where it raises a pure legal issue without requiring fresh factual enquiry, avoiding an academic merits determination.

Voluntary and corpus donations received from identified donors cannot be treated as anonymous where the recipient maintains donor names, PANs, addresses, donation amounts, income-tax returns, confirmations and bank details at the time of receipt. Donors' non-compliance with verification notices, without contrary findings in the remand report or independent evidence displacing the records, does not negate donor identity. Specific confirmations may also establish the corpus character of donations. On these facts, the additions for voluntary and corpus donations were set aside.

Protective addition under section 69A cannot rest solely on physical possession of jewellery where the same asset has been substantively assessed in the hands of another claimed owner. Physical possession is relevant but does not establish actual or beneficial ownership without independent positive evidence. A protective assessment is contingent and serves to safeguard revenue only where genuine uncertainty exists regarding the person liable; it cannot be converted into a substantive charge through the assessee's non-compliance. The stated principles support deletion of the protective addition and recomputation of consequential interest. The delay in filing the appeal was treated as condonable where bona fide pursuit of connected remedies established sufficient cause.

Omission to apply the statutory deeming provisions to excess cash consideration and undisclosed cash can render an assessment erroneous and prejudicial to the interests of Revenue where it causes non-levy or short levy of tax. Undisclosed investment and cash are addressed through sections 69B and 69A, with the special tax regime under section 115BBE and potential penalty proceedings under section 271AAC. Such omissions indicate non-application of mind and support revision under section 263, including directions for fresh inquiry and a reasoned reassessment.

Interest disallowance on interest-free supplier advances requires an established nexus between interest-bearing borrowings and diversion of borrowed funds for non-business purposes. Consistent exclusion of VAT from both opening and closing stock requires corresponding adjustments to opening stock, purchases and sales; adding VAT only to closing stock distorts profit and is tax neutral after full adjustments. Taxation of outstanding creditor balances as cessation of trading liabilities requires remission or cessation during the relevant year and prior allowance of the liability as a deduction. Continuing creditor transactions or subsequent set-off arrangements supported by confirmation do not alone establish cessation.

Section 271AAB requires an independent finding that surrendered amounts fall within its exhaustive definition of undisclosed income; an admission in a search statement alone does not satisfy that requirement. Land and other advances are fund outflows, while the definition concerns undisclosed income represented by inflows or specified search material. Undated and uncorroborated diary notings lacking complete party details, payment mode and land particulars are dumb documents that cannot independently establish undisclosed income. Deeming provisions for unexplained investments cannot be imported where they were not invoked in the quantum assessment. Consequently, penalty on the recorded advances was not sustainable.

Subscription-based SaaS receipts from Indian customers did not constitute fees for included services under Article 12(4)(b) of the India-USA tax treaty where the products were standard, automated and non-customised. Customers independently used the SDK, their own data and dashboard-generated reports, without receiving customer-specific development, coding, algorithm configuration or post-sale technical services. Technology is made available only when recipients can independently apply it; access to a product embodying technology is insufficient. Retained source code, algorithms and processes, together with recurring subscriptions, showed no transfer of enduring technical capability. Incidental account management, support and demonstrations merely enabled product use and did not transfer technical knowledge, know-how, processes, plans or designs.

Section 56(2)(viib) does not support an addition for excess share premium where the issue price falls within the 10% safe-harbour variation from the fair market value determined under Rule 11UA. Rule 11UA(4), read with Notification No. 81/2023, treats an issue price within that tolerance as fair market value. Since the variation between the issue price and Rule 11UA valuation was 3.98%, the issue price was deemed to be fair market value and the addition was unsustainable.

Clause (iv) of the first proviso to section 80G(5), effective from 1 October 2024, independently permits a trust that has commenced activities to seek regular approval after commencement. An application decided after the amendment took effect cannot be treated as non-maintainable solely because it missed the time limit under the former clause (iii) regime. Section 12AB registration may support the genuineness of the trust's activities. Rejection solely for delay was set aside, and the application was restored for consideration under clause (iv)(B) after a reasonable opportunity of hearing.