Section 199

Section 199 — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 199, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Manohar Ramabtar Jhunjhunwala v PCIT High CourtHelps taxpayerValidity unconfirmed
  My employer deducted tax but never deposited it, so the credit was denied on processing, a demand now sits on the portal and my later years' refunds are being eaten by it. Do I get the credit and the refund, or only a promise that nobody will recover from me?
  You get the credit and the refund, not merely a bar on recovery. A Division Bench of the Bombay High Court, hearing a batch of such petitions with the assistance of an amicus, held that where an assessee establishes that tax was in fact deducted at source, the Department must grant appropriate TDS credit and cannot recover the corresponding amount from the deductee directly or indirectly, that the consequential relief including refund must follow, and that pending disposal of a credit application the demand must be marked in the system as stayed or not recoverable so that no coercive recovery or refund adjustment takes place.
• Munchener Ruckversicherungs Gesellshaft AG v CIT (International Taxation) High CourtHelps taxpayer
  The deductor credited the TDS late, so it turned up in 26AS only after I had filed. The department says I should have revised my return, and refuses credit because I never offered the income to tax. Is there a way back?
  Yes - s.155(14). The Delhi High Court held that s.155(14) places the Assessing Officer under a statutory obligation to amend the assessment or intimation once the certificate or the updated Form 26AS is produced, and that the sub-section neither contemplates nor mandates the original return being amended or revised. It also held that the Commissioner was wrong to require the income to be offered to tax where the assessee had consistently and uncontestedly said the receipt was not taxable in India.
• Incredible Unique Buildcon P Ltd v ITO High CourtHelps taxpayerHigh Courts differ
  My customer deducted TDS on my bills and deposited almost none of it, and I have no Form 16A. Can I still get the credit and stop the demand?
  Yes. The Court held that the bar in s.205 operates as soon as it is established that tax was deducted at source, whether or not the deductor deposited it and whether or not a TDS certificate was issued. Form 16A is not the only evidence of deduction; other reliable material — the return disclosures supported by ledger accounts — will do.
• Pr. CIT v Gujarat Industries Power Co. Ltd — where the accounts depart from the company's own accounting policy, the book profit can be altered High CourtCuts both waysValidity unconfirmed
  I have always understood that under Apollo Tyres the Assessing Officer cannot touch audited accounts. He says s.115JB is wider than s.115J and that our profit and loss account was not drawn in accordance with our own stated revenue recognition policy. Is there anything in that?
  There is, but note at once how the point comes down: the High Court dismissed the Revenue's appeal holding that no substantial question of law arose, so the proposition below is the reasoning of the CIT(A), confirmed by the Tribunal and left undisturbed, and not the High Court's own. The Apollo Tyres bar is not absolute under s.115JB: the net profit can be altered where the profit and loss account was not drawn up in accordance with Parts II and III of Schedule VI to the Companies Act, and where the accounting policies and accounting standards were not correctly adopted for the accounts laid before the annual general meeting. On these facts the amount actually recovered had to be recognised as revenue under the company's own stated policy, and Rs.16.01 crores was rightly added to book profit — but the balance of Rs.78.1 crores, not being recovered, was not.
• Sanjay Sudan v ACIT High CourtHelps taxpayerHigh Courts differ
  My employer deducted TDS but never deposited it. The department has raised a demand on me and set my later refund off against it. Can it do that?
  No. s.205 bars a direct demand on the person from whose income the tax was deducted, and the Court held that adjusting a later year's refund against that demand is an indirect recovery of the same tax. The demand notice and the adjustment were quashed and the refund directed to be released.
• Kartik Vijaysinh Sonavane v DCIT High CourtHelps taxpayer
  My employer deducted TDS from my salary and never deposited it. The portal shows nothing in 26AS, I do not even have Form 16 for one of the years, and the department has adjusted my later refunds against the demand. Can they do that?
  No. Where the employer has in fact deducted the tax, the department is precluded from denying the deductee credit for it, and any recovery or adjustment already made must be refunded with statutory interest. The absence of the entry in the departmental system, and the absence of a Form 16 for one of the years, were both raised by the Revenue and neither saved the demand.
• Devarsh Pravinbhai Patel v ACIT High CourtHelps taxpayerValidity unconfirmed
  My employer deducted tax from my salary but never paid it over. Can the department recover it from me and adjust my refunds?
  No. The Gujarat High Court held that the department cannot deny the benefit of tax deducted at source by the employer, and directed that credit be given for the relevant years. It followed its own Division Bench decision in Sumit Devendra Rajani, which construed section 205 and agreed with the Bombay and Gauhati High Courts that where the deductee produces Form 16A the credit must be given and a demand cannot be sustained. Any recovery or adjustment already made out of later years' refunds was to be returned with statutory interest. The department remains free to recover the tax from the deductor.
• Naresh Bhavani Shah (HUF) v CIT High CourtHelps taxpayer
  The HUF's money was invested in the karta's own name, so the TDS certificate and the 26AS entry carry his individual PAN. The HUF offered the interest to tax and the karta claimed no credit. The department says PAN mismatch, no credit. What now?
  The credit was directed to be given to the HUF. The Court held that the ordinary route is Rule 37BA(2) - the deductee files a declaration with the deductor, and the deductor issues the certificate in the name of the person entitled to credit - and that this procedure must invariably be completed before credit can be claimed where the certificate shows someone else's name and PAN. But it also held there is no dearth of power in the department to give credit in a genuine case, and on these special facts it directed credit on the karta filing an affidavit that the money and the income were not his and that he had claimed no credit.
• IVRCL-KBL (JV) v ACIT High CourtHelps taxpayer
  My joint venture bid for and won the contract, the whole of it was back-to-backed to a constituent member, and the government deducted TDS from the JV's bills. The Assessing Officer refuses the JV credit under Rule 37BA(2)(i), saying credit belongs to the member who did the work. Who gets it?
  The joint venture does. Rule 37BA(2)(i) displaces credit from the deductee to another person only where some provision of the Act makes the income assessable in that other person's hands, and only where the proviso's machinery has been followed - the deductee files a declaration with the deductor and the deductor reports the deduction in the other person's name. Neither condition was met, and the Court set aside the assessment orders to the extent they denied the JV credit.
• CIT-15 v Relcom High CourtHelps taxpayer
  A vendor billed my sister concern but put my PAN on the TDS certificate, so my 26AS shows receipts and TDS that are not mine. The tax has been paid by the sister concern. Can I claim the credit without offering that income?
  On these facts, yes. The Delhi High Court refused to let s.199 be used as a technical bar where the corresponding income had been assessed in the sister concern's hands, that concern had claimed no credit and raised no objection, and the deduction was undisputed. The Court declined to require the assessee to first chase the vendor for a corrected certificate, holding that procedure is the handmaid of justice.
• Court On Its Own Motion v CIT High CourtHelps taxpayer
  CPC has refused my TDS credit and adjusted the refund against an old demand. What did the Delhi High Court actually direct?
  Taking up the problem on its own motion, the Delhi High Court issued directions on both limbs. A TDS claim supported by the deductor's certificate is not to be rejected merely because the uploaded information does not tally, and unmatched challans are to be verified and corrected within a fixed time. And s.245 is a two-stage provision: prior intimation of the proposed adjustment, a reply from the assessee, consideration of that reply by the Assessing Officer, an order under s.245, and communication of the outcome. A computerised set-off without that sequence does not comply with the section.
• Yashpal Sahni v Rekha Hajarnavis, ACIT High CourtHelps taxpayer
  My employer deducted TDS from my salary, never paid it to the Government and never gave me a Form 16. The Department is now recovering that tax from me. Can it?
  No. The Bombay High Court held that section 205 bars a direct demand on the assessee to the extent tax has been deducted at source, and the bar operates the moment deduction is established. Whether the deductor paid the money over, and whether a Form 16 was issued, are both irrelevant to the bar. The Act gives the Department complete machinery against the deductor - section 201 default, interest, a charge on its assets, penalty under section 221 and prosecution under section 276B - and that is the only route open. Rs 17,89,587 recovered by attaching the employee's bank account was ordered refunded with interest at six per cent.
• Anusuya Alva v DCIT High CourtHelps taxpayer
  My tenant deducted tax from my rent but never paid it over or gave me a Form 16A. The department is now recovering it from me - can it?
  No. The Karnataka High Court quashed the demand to that extent. Section 205 bars a direct demand on the assessee to the extent tax has been deducted from her income, and the section says nothing about the deducted tax having been remitted. The word deduct in section 205 cannot be read as deducted and remitted. The person deducting acts as an agent of the Revenue under a statutory compulsion the payee cannot resist, so his default cannot be visited on her. The Revenue must recover from the deductor, and was restrained from enforcing the demand against the landlord by any coercive method.
• ACIT v Om Prakash Gattani High CourtCuts both ways
  The deductor deducted my tax and never deposited it. The Assessing Officer says he cannot give me credit until the money reaches the treasury, and has attached my bank account. Is he right on both counts?
  He may be right on the first and is wrong on the second. This is the foundational decision holding that s.205 bars any recovery from the deductee once tax has in fact been deducted, whether or not the deductor paid it over - the garnishee notices under s.226(3) were quashed - while at the same time holding that credit under s.199 is contingent on the tax being paid to the Central Government, so the Assessing Officer's note withholding credit until proof of payment was allowed to stand.
• Bhura Mal Raj Mal v CIT High CourtHelps taxpayer
  The officer has passed a s.154 order shifting my TDS credit to the next year because the payer's accounting year is different from mine. Can he do that by rectification?
  No. The Rajasthan High Court held that the credit belongs to the year in which the income is assessed in the recipient's hands, not the year fixed by the payer's accounting year or the date on the certificate, and in any event the point was at best debatable, so s.154 could not be used at all. The consequential withdrawal of s.214 interest and charging of s.215 interest also fell.
• Bhandari Bros v ITO, Bundi ITATHelps taxpayer
  Tax was deducted in my PAN under s.194Q on the whole mandi turnover, but I am a kachha arahtiya and I only offer my commission to tax. CPC has cut my TDS credit down in proportion. Can I still claim the whole deduction?
  Yes, on this order. A commission agent in the Bundi grain mandi declared commission receipts of Rs 2,94,975 and claimed TDS of Rs 2,37,479, of which Rs 74,072 had been deducted by purchasers under s.194Q on sale proceeds that belonged to the farmers; CPC allowed Rs 10,037 under s.143(1)(a) and the Commissioner (Appeals) upheld the withholding of the s.194Q component. The Jaipur SMC Bench held that once an amount has been deducted from the assessee's income and paid into the Government treasury against his PAN, credit cannot be refused on the ground that the deduction ought to have been made in somebody else's hands, and found no merit in the Commissioner (Appeals)'s reliance on s.199 read with rule 37BA(2). Note what this is not: the Tribunal did not decide any question about the scope or correct application of s.194Q, and expressly proceeded on the footing that the deduction may have been made wrongly.
• HCC CP PL JV v ITO ITATHelps taxpayerValidity unconfirmed
  The Assessing Officer has withdrawn my joint venture's TDS credit, saying section 238(1) gives the refund to the constituent partners and not to the JV. Can he do that?
  Not on these facts. Section 238(1) transfers the right to refund only where the income of one person is in fact included in the total income of another; where the joint venture itself credited the gross contract receipts as its revenue and debited the back-to-back payments to its constituents as expenses, the profit or loss from the contract was disclosed in the JV's own hands, so section 238(1) is not attracted and credit under Rule 37BA(1) follows the person to whom the payment was made and in whose name the tax was deducted.
• Adroit Structural Engineers Pvt Ltd v ADIT (CPC) ITATHelps taxpayerValidity unconfirmed
  The payer deducted and reported my TDS one year early, so it sits in the previous year's 26AS. CPC disallowed the credit in the year I offered the income, and the CIT(A) said 26AS is 26AS. What is the answer?
  Rule 37BA(3)(i) gives credit for the assessment year for which the income is assessable, so credit belongs to the year in which the income was offered, not the year in which the deductor happened to report it. The Tribunal held that where there is no double claim the assessee is entitled to credit in the year the corresponding income was offered and the invoices were raised, and restored the matter to the Assessing Officer to verify that the same credit had not been claimed in another year.
• Swayam Prabha Jain v ACIT ITATHelps taxpayerSuperseded by amendment
  My tenant deposited the disputed rent in court and the TDS was deducted then, but the money only reached me two years later when the suit was settled. The officer has taxed it in the earlier year. Which year is it taxable in, and what happens to the TDS credit?
  The rent is taxable in the year it is actually received, not the year it was deposited in court, and the addition made in the earlier year was deleted. The TDS, however, does not simply follow the money: under Rule 37BA(3)(ii) the credit is allowed across the years in the same proportion in which the income is assessable, so the officer was directed to give proportionate credit in both years.
• CBDT Office Memoranda of 1 June 2015 and 11 March 2016 — TDS credit mismatch CBDT Circulars & InstructionsHelps taxpayer
  Is there anything binding on the assessing officer that stops him enforcing a demand caused by my deductor's failure to deposit?
  Yes. The Board told field officers in terms that s.205 bars a direct demand where tax has been deducted from the assessee's income, and that a demand on account of tax credit mismatch cannot be enforced coercively. It had to say it twice — the 2016 Office Memorandum was issued because officers were not following the 2015 letter.
• CBDT Instruction No. 5/2013 — TDS credit where 26AS does not match CBDT Circulars & InstructionsHelps taxpayer
  Form 26AS does not show my TDS but I hold the deductor's certificate. Must the officer still verify and give me credit?
  Yes. Issued to give effect to the Delhi High Court's directions in Court On Its Own Motion v. CIT [2013] 352 ITR 273 (Delhi), the Instruction tells the assessing officer that where the assessee produces the TDS certificate as evidence against a mismatched amount, the officer must verify whether the deductor has paid the tax into the Government account and, if he has, give the credit. The Allahabad High Court has since decided a refund case on the strength of it.

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.