Section 135

Section 135 — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 135, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Pooran Mal v Director of Inspection Supreme CourtHelps department
  The search on me was illegal. Can I stop the department using what it took?
  No. Indian tax law has no exclusionary rule. The Supreme Court upheld s.132 and rule 112 and held that even if a search contravened the section, the material seized was liable to be used, subject to law, before the income-tax authorities against the person from whose custody it was taken. Illegality in the search goes to relief against the search, not to the admissibility of what it produced.
• Dr. V.S. Chauhan v Director of Income Tax (Investigation) High CourtHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  The letter from the Investigation wing cites a provision that does not exist. Is it void for that?
  No. The Court held that a notice issued under a wrongly cited or non-existent provision is not for that reason invalid if the authority had the power under an appropriate provision. A letter purporting to be under 'section 133(1A)' was sustained as referable to s.133(6) read with s.135. The petitions were dismissed, and also as barred by laches after a two-year delay.
• Section 84 of the Black Money Act - the Income-tax Act provisions applied CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both waysNo later treatment found
  Which provisions of the Income-tax Act apply to the Black Money Act, and can the officer borrow one that is not on the list?
  Section 84 applies a closed list: clauses (c) and (d) of s.90(1), clauses (c) and (d) of s.90A(1), ss.119, 133, 134, 135 and 138, the whole of Chapter XV, and ss.237, 240, 245, 280, 280A, 280B, 280D, 281, 281B and 284 of the Income-tax Act, with necessary modifications, as if they referred to undisclosed foreign income and asset instead of to income-tax. The list is expressed as an enumeration and the decided points located in this area turn on what is left out of it. Sections 234A, 234B and 234C are not on it, which is why the Chennai Bench in Pascal Postel held that the interest charge in s.40(2) has no advance-tax machinery to operate on; s.230 is not on it either, which is the omission on which Preetha Krishna (Madras High Court) is understood to turn, though no copy of that judgment was opened for this note.

Listed strongest first: Supreme Court, then High Court, then Tribunal, then CBDT. Nothing here has yet been read in full by a chartered accountant — open an entry to see where it came from.