Section 292BB

Section 292BB — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 292BB, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• CIT v Laxman Das Khandelwal Supreme CourtHelps taxpayer
  No s.143(2) notice was issued at all. Does s.292BB save the assessment?
  No. The notice is a jurisdictional requirement and its complete absence makes the assessment void. Section 292BB is a fiction about service — for it to apply, the notice must have emanated from the department in the first place.
• Asha Dubey v Union of India High CourtHelps taxpayer
  They issued a 148 notice in my late husband's name. Can they just issue a fresh one now?
  Not if the s.149 period has run out. Allahabad held that a notice on a dead person is void ab initio and that an order quashing such a notice is not a 'finding or direction' under s.150(1), so it cannot be used to reopen limitation.
• CIT (International Taxation) v Oracle Systems Corporation High CourtHelps taxpayerValidity unconfirmed
  No s.143(2) notice was ever issued. Does s.292BB save the assessment because you took part?
  No. Failure to issue a s.143(2) notice is a fatal procedural defect. Section 292BB deals with an assessee who participated being precluded from objecting to service — it cannot cure the non-issuance of the notice itself.
• Meet Lalwani v ITO High CourtHelps taxpayer
  I filed the death certificate and they still issued the 148 notice in my mother's name. Is it valid?
  No. The Madhya Pradesh High Court quashed the s.148 notice and the s.148A(d) order. Once the Department knew of the death, issuing the notice in the deceased's name was a failure to acquire jurisdiction, and ss.292B, 292BB and 159 do not cure it.
• Savita Kapila v ACIT High CourtHelps taxpayerValidity unconfirmed
  A section 148 notice was issued in my late father's name after he had died. Is the reassessment valid because we never told the department?
  No. The Delhi High Court quashed the notice and everything that followed. Issuing the notice in the name of the correct person, and not a dead person, is not a procedural requirement but a condition precedent to a valid notice, so the jurisdictional requirement of section 148 was not met. No notice was ever issued to the legal heir within the limitation in section 149(1)(b); the proceedings were simply transferred to her PAN. Section 159 does not help the department where nothing was pending in the assessee's lifetime, and there is no statutory obligation on legal heirs to intimate the death. Sections 292B and 292BB do not cure it.
• CIT v Chetan Gupta High CourtHelps taxpayer
  The section 148 notice was served on somebody at my old business premises, not on me. My accountant then wrote in objecting. Is the reassessment good?
  No. The Delhi High Court held that issue and service of the section 148 notice on the assessee, or on an agent he has empowered in writing to receive it, are jurisdictional requirements, not procedure. Service on an accountant at premises the assessee had not given as his address, whose authority the Revenue could not establish, was no service. Objecting through chartered accountants and taking part in the proceedings is not a waiver. Section 292BB is prospective from 1 April 2008 and, since the assessee objected before the reassessment was completed, its proviso applies anyway. The reassessment was quashed.
• PCIT v Jai Shiv Shankar Traders High CourtCuts both ways
  If the assessee says its original return should be treated as the return in response to s.148, must the Assessing Officer still issue a fresh s.143(2) notice?
  The assessee told the Assessing Officer that its original return be treated as filed in response to the s.148 notice. The officer then completed the reassessment without issuing any notice under s.143(2). The Delhi High Court held the omission fatal and held that s.292BB cures defective service of a notice, not the failure to issue one at all.
• ACIT v JD Ispat Pvt Ltd ITATHelps taxpayerValidity unconfirmed
  Same point, at Tribunal level: can taking part in a reassessment cure a missing s.143(2) notice?
  No. Section 292BB cures defects in service of notice but does not cure the complete absence of the notice. The reassessment was quashed and a Rs 2.33 crore s.68 addition went with 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.