Section 44AA(2)

Section 44AA(2) — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 44AA(2), in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• DIT (International Taxation) v Schlumberger Asia Services Ltd (Full Bench) High CourtHelps taxpayer
  Our Uttarakhand assessments add back the service tax ONGC reimbursed to us. Is there a binding answer in that High Court?
  Yes, and it is against the Revenue. A Full Bench of the Uttarakhand High Court answered the reference holding that the amount reimbursed by ONGC to the service provider, representing service tax the provider had already paid to the Government, does not form part of the aggregate amount referred to in clauses (a) and (b) of s.44BB(2).
• CIT v Harjeev Aggarwal High CourtCuts both ways
  The department is taxing me on what I admitted in my statement during the search. Can an addition rest on that statement alone?
  No. The Delhi High Court held that a statement recorded under section 132(4) is not itself "evidence found as a result of search" for the purposes of section 158BB(1). It is information, and it can support a block assessment only so far as it is relatable to incriminating material actually unearthed in the search. A standalone admission, with no document or asset behind it, cannot trigger a block assessment. On the facts, though, the Court found there was such material - a diary of unaccounted sales and books that did not record admittedly cash payments - so the addition of Rs.74 lakh was restored.
• Shakir Ahmad v ITO — s.44AE covers only the goods carriages the assessee owns, so expenditure on hired vehicles remains deductible ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  My client is assessed under s.44AE on his own trucks, but he also hired trucks from the market. The officer has disallowed all the running expenses. Is that right?
  No. Section 44AE applies to an assessee who owns not more than ten goods carriages and deems the income from all the goods carriages owned by him; receipts relating to owned goods carriages are subject to the section, but vehicles taken on hire are outside it. The Delhi Bench directed the Assessing Officer to allow the deduction of expenditure relating to goods carriages not owned by the assessee but taken on hire from the open market for carrying out the transportation activities.
• ADIT (International Taxation) v Shandong Tiejun Electric Power Engineering Co. Ltd — where s.44BBB(2) is complied with, the officer cannot reject the books under s.145(3) and fall back on the 10 per cent ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  We are a foreign company on an approved turnkey power project. We keep books, they are audited, and we recognise revenue on percentage of completion under AS-7. The Assessing Officer has rejected the books under section 145(3) and taxed 10 per cent of our billings under section 44BBB(1). Can he do that?
  The Ahmedabad Bench of the Tribunal held he could not, on these facts, and dismissed the Revenue's appeal. Section 44BBB(2) gives the assessee an option to be assessed on lower profits on two conditions only — that it keeps and maintains books and other documents as required under s.44AA(2) and that it gets its accounts audited and furnishes the s.44AB report — and where those are satisfied and a recognised method of accounting under AS-7 has been regularly followed and disclosed, the officer's action in rejecting the books under s.145(3) and assessing under s.44BBB(1) on a presumptive basis is not justified.
• Statutory position — s.44AE: Rs 1,000 per tonne for a heavy goods vehicle from AY 2019-20, Rs 7,500 for every other goods carriage CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  My client runs six trucks, two of them well over twelve tonnes. What does he declare under s.44AE, and from which year did the per-tonne rate start?
  For a heavy goods vehicle the deemed profit is one thousand rupees per tonne of gross vehicle weight or unladen weight, as the case may be, for every month or part of a month of ownership, or the amount claimed to have been actually earned from that vehicle, whichever is higher; for every other goods carriage it is seven thousand five hundred rupees a month on the same 'whichever is higher' basis. That differentiated structure, and the definition of a heavy goods vehicle as a goods carriage whose gross vehicle weight exceeds 12,000 kilograms, were substituted into s.44AE by section 16 of the Finance Act 2018 with effect from 1 April 2019 — that is, from AY 2019-20.
• Statutory position — s.44AD(4) and s.44AD(5): the five-year lock-out, and why the books-and-audit duty bites only if total income exceeds the exemption limit CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  My client filed under s.44AD for two years and then declared below eight per cent in the third. What happens to him for the next five years, and does he now have to get audited?
  By s.44AD(4), an eligible assessee who has declared profit in accordance with s.44AD and who, in any of the five assessment years relevant to the succeeding previous years, declares profit NOT in accordance with s.44AD(1), is shut out of s.44AD for the five assessment years subsequent to the assessment year in which he broke ranks. By s.44AD(5), that assessee must keep books under s.44AA(2) and get them audited and reported under s.44AB only if his total income exceeds the maximum amount which is not chargeable to income-tax — a condition that both the department and the assessee routinely read out of the sub-section.
• Statutory position — section 44BBB: the 10 per cent turnkey power presumption, the international-aid condition dropped in 2003, and the lower-profit claim in sub-section (2) CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  We are a foreign company erecting plant for a power project in India. The Assessing Officer wants to tax 10 per cent of our billings under section 44BBB although our audited books show much less. Can we claim the lower figure, and does it matter that our project is not funded by any aid programme?
  You can claim the lower figure, and the aid-funding point no longer matters. Section 44BBB(2), inserted by the Finance Act 2003 with effect from 1 April 2004, provides that notwithstanding sub-section (1) an assessee may claim lower profits and gains than the 10 per cent, if he keeps and maintains books of account and other documents as required under s.44AA(2) and gets his accounts audited and furnishes the audit report as required under s.44AB — whereupon the Assessing Officer must proceed to make an assessment of the total income or loss under s.143(3). The same Finance Act 2003 omitted, with effect from the same date, the words "and financed under any international aid programme" which until then had confined the section to aid-funded turnkey power projects; what remains is the requirement that the turnkey power project be approved by the Central Government in that behalf.

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.