Can the CIT(A) increase my assessment, and can he tax something the Assessing Officer never looked at?
Section 251(1)(a) lets the CIT(A) confirm, reduce, enhance or annul, and section 251(2) requires a reasonable opportunity of showing cause before any enhancement. The powers are plenary and coterminous with the Assessing Officer's. But they stop at the boundary of the assessment: a source of income the officer never considered from the point of view of taxability cannot be brought in by enhancement.
Three lines of authority have to be held together. First, the Supreme Court in Kanpur Coal Syndicate held that the first appellate authority has plenary powers, coterminous with those of the Assessing Officer, and can do what the officer can do and direct him to do what he failed to do. Second, section 251(2) prohibits enhancement without a reasonable opportunity of showing cause, so a notice of enhancement is a jurisdictional step and not a formality. Third, and most litigated, the Supreme Court in Shapoorji Pallonji Mistry and again in Rai Bahadur Hardutroy Motilal Chamaria confined the power to the subject-matter of the assessment - to sources of income considered expressly or by clear implication by the Assessing Officer from the point of view of taxability. Material sitting in the file that the officer never examined for taxability is not enough. Where a genuinely new source emerges, the Delhi High Court in Union Tyres held the route is reassessment under section 147/148 or revision under section 263, not enhancement, and the Full Bench in Sardari Lal & Co adopted the same reconciliation. The Revenue routinely cites Nirbheram Daluram (1997) for wider language; the accepted answer is that Nirbheram did not address the new-source question, so the restriction survives. Where enhancement is properly within the subject-matter - as where the additions are drawn from the assessee's own books and balance sheet already before the officer - it has been upheld. Practitioners go wrong by arguing only the merits of the proposed enhancement and never taking the jurisdictional objection, which is the ground most likely to succeed on further appeal.
How wide are the first appellate authority's powers when it disposes of an appeal?
The assessing officer accepted my method of accounting. Can the first appellate authority reject it for the first time in my own appeal and enhance the assessment?
The first appellate authority has enhanced my assessment using items the Assessing Officer never looked at. Can it do that, or has it gone beyond its jurisdiction?
Can the CIT(A) use the enhancement power to tax a source of income the Assessing Officer never examined?
Can an appellate authority under the Income-tax Act throw out an appeal because the appellant did not turn up?
Can the first appellate authority tax a source of income the officer never looked at?
Can you raise a ground before the CIT(A) that you never raised before the officer?
The assessing officer ignored my partition claim and assessed the family anyway. If the Tribunal finds that illegal, can it simply cancel the assessment and stop there?
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