Sriram and Co. vs Assistant Commissioner of Income Tax

Heard learned Counsel for the appellant at length.

From a proper comprehension of the entire submission made by learned Counsel, what we could make out is that he wants to assail the action in rejecting the books of account, while we do not find any error on the part of the authorities below in rejecting the books of account, as it has clearly been found that the assessee has only produced computerised cash book, ledger, journal and few vouchers; and neither stock register, nor any log book/running/distance mileage account etc., has been produced. Even the labour registers with proof of payment to them have not been produced. This has been considered by the learned Commissioner also, and in para 5, it has been found that it is admitted by authorised representative of the appellant that books of account were rightly rejected u/s 145(3) of the Income Tax Act. That being the position, this question need not be gone into by us, as to whether books of account were rightly rejected or not.

Thereafter, the only contention that survived was, about the correctness of the rate of receipt, and gross profit, assessed by the learned authorities below, and as to whether the profit rate, as applied for the assessment year 1994-95, should have been adopted, or the rate applied in the year 1995-96 should have been adopted. In our view, all said and done, after rejection of books of account, it remains a matter of best judgment assessment, which obviously does require some free play between the joints, and when this has been considered by the two appellate authorities below, it cannot be said to be giving rise to any substantial question of law, being pure question of fact.

Learned Counsel then submitted that the learned Tribunal should have dealt with, and decided each grounds of appeal as raised before it, inasmuch as, as many as 8 grounds had been taken, as is clear from Annex. 3.

True it is that the learned Tribunal has not recorded the findings groundwise, but then, a look at the grounds shows, that the ground Nos. 1,2,3,4, and 8 in roundabout way, mean to challenge the rejection of books of account. While as noticed above, when the rejection of books of account was admitted to be correct before the learned Commissioner, these grounds need not have detained the learned Tribunal. Then so far as the ground No. 5 is concerned, regarding disallowance of depreciation, when we tried to go into the merits of this ground, learned Counsel submitted that looking to the amount of depreciation disallowed, the ground is not of much seriousness, what is important is that the learned Tribunal should have discussed the contention, and should have decided it, this way or that way. Of course, the learned Counsel is right when he submits that learned Tribunal should have decided the ground, as raised, but then looking to the amount involved, and as submitted by learned Counsel, on that ground, we are not inclined to admit the appeal.

So far as ground Nos. 6 and 7 are concerned, these also relate to the estimation of receipts. Since the assessment has been made on best judgment assessment basis, and when the learned Tribunal has considered the entire scenario of best judgment assessment, mere fact that these two grounds were not separately discussed would not vitiate the impugned judgment.

Thus, the net result is that we do not find any sufficient ground to entertain the appeal. The same is, therefore, dismissed summarily.