TOLA 2020 s.3

TOLA 2020 s.3 — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section TOLA 2020 s.3, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Union of India v Rajeev Bansal Supreme CourtCuts both ways
  Your notice was issued in the 1 April to 30 June 2021 window. Was it saved by TOLA, or is it dead?
  Saved, but only within limits. TOLA extends the time limit for issuing the reassessment notice and for the sanction under s.151. It does not extend anything else, and every other defence survives — including the surviving-period computation for your own assessment year.
• Union of India v Ashish Agarwal Supreme CourtHelps department
  What happened to the thousands of s.148 notices issued under the old rules after the law changed in 2021?
  Reported as treating those notices as s.148A(b) show-cause notices instead of quashing them, with directions on how they were to proceed.
• CBDT Instruction No. 1/2022 — the document the whole Ashish Agarwal exercise was run on CBDT Circulars & InstructionsHelps departmentPartly overruled — read this first
  My reassessment for an old year was restarted in 2022 on the strength of a Board instruction rather than a fresh notice. What does that instruction actually say, and how much of it is the Supreme Court's?
  This is the instruction, issued under s.119 a week after Union of India v Ashish Agarwal, that told every Assessing Officer how to work out that judgment on the roughly ninety thousand notices issued under the old reassessment law between 1 April 2021 and 30 June 2021. It directs that the judgment applies to all those notices whether or not they were challenged; that the notices travel back to their original dates and new s.149 is then applied at that point, so a fresh s.148 notice may issue for assessment years 2013-14 to 2015-16 only under s.149(1)(b) and for 2016-17 and 2017-18 under s.149(1)(a); that information and material need not be given at all where escaped income for 2013-14 to 2015-16 is less than fifty lakh rupees; and that in the remaining cases the material was to be supplied by 2 June 2022, the assessee had two weeks to reply, and an order under s.148A(d) was to follow with the approval of the specified authority under s.151. Three of those directions go further than the judgment does, and the courts have said so.

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.