An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, as F. No. 279/Misc./M-44/2018-ITJ, dated 23 March 2021.
A Board letter conveying approval for the notification of one Commissioner of Income-tax (Appeals) in each Principal Chief Commissioner region, and one for International Taxation, to exercise jurisdiction over cases under the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015. It supersedes the Board's earlier letter of 1st October, 2018 and follows the Department of Revenue's order of 25.09.2020 under which the posts were created.
This is an order of the Board. An order is issued under a power the Act itself gives the Board — most often section 119, which lets it direct its own officers and, in the cases the section names, relax a requirement. Read the enabling words before deciding how far it reaches: the power is administrative, and it cannot rewrite the charge.
In supersession of the Board's letter F. No. 278/M-44/2018-ITJ dated 1st October, 2018, approval is granted for notifying the Commissioners of Income-tax (Appeals) set out in a table of nineteen rows to exercise jurisdiction over Black Money Act cases in the respective regions or charges — among them CIT(A)-31 Delhi for Delhi, CIT(A)-51 Mumbai for Mumbai, CIT(A)-3 Patna for Bihar and Jharkhand, CIT(A)-II Bengaluru for Karnataka and Goa, CIT(A)-20 Kolkata for West Bengal and Sikkim, and CIT(A)-42 Delhi for International Taxation. The notification is to be issued on that approval and copies sent to the Board for record. The approval is deemed to have come into force on 25th September, 2020 or on the date of creation of the post shown in column C of the table, whichever is later.
The Faceless Appeal Scheme, 2020 sent income-tax appeals down a faceless route but kept certain classes out of it, among them appeals relating to serious frauds, search matters, international tax and the Black Money Act. Those appeals therefore needed a named Commissioner (Appeals) in each region with jurisdiction to hear them, and the 2018 arrangement no longer matched the posts that existed after the Department of Revenue's order of September 2020. This letter re-fixes the map.
It is an internal allocation of appellate jurisdiction and it binds the department's officers. An appellant is affected because it settles who will hear his Black Money Act appeal, but he takes nothing more from it; and neither the Tribunal nor a High Court is bound by the Board's view of where jurisdiction lies. Jurisdiction comes from the notification issued on this approval, not from the approval itself.
Deemed to have come into force on 25th September, 2020, or on the date the relevant post was created, whichever is later. The letter itself is dated 23rd March, 2021.
The approval is a step towards jurisdiction, not its source — the notification issued on its strength is. Identify from the table which Commissioner (Appeals) covers your region, and note that International Taxation has a separate entry at Delhi. Because the effect is backdated to 25.09.2020, appeals filed in the intervening months may have changed hands.
This approval shall be deemed to have come into force on 25th September 2020 or on the date of creation of post in column C of table in para 2 supra, whichever is later.
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order F. No. 279/Misc./M-44/2018-ITJ, 23 March 2021. Read it in the department’s own PDF.
What here is the Board’s and what is ours. The document is the Central Board of Direct Taxes’ own. Its number, its date and the words quoted above are reproduced from the Board’s own PDF, which is here. Everything else on this page is ours: the plain-English account of what the document is and what it does, the reading of which provision it turns on, the note on what to watch, and the choice of cases. Where our account and the document part, the document governs.
An order of the Board binds the department, not you and not a court. The Board writes to its own officers. An assessee may hold the department to an order or an instruction that helps him; the department cannot hold an assessee to one that hurts him, and the Tribunal and the courts decide the law for themselves. This is the most common mistake made with this material, and it is worth making twice: a direction of the Board is not a section of the Act.
What we could not settle. The letter cites no section of the Income-tax Act, 1961, so sections is left empty; it turns on the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act, 2015 and the Faceless Appeal Scheme, 2020. Column C of the table, giving the date of creation of each post, was not transcribed.