(1.) THESE five appeals by the Revenue under S. 21H of the Interest-tax Act, 1974 (for short, 'the Act') r/w S. 260A of the IT Act, 1961 (for short, the 'IT Act'), are in respect of the asst. yrs. 1992-93, 1993-94, 1994-95, 1995-96 and 1996-97 respectively and are all in respect of the same assessee, an Indian company by name M/s Standard Chartered Finance Ltd., (formerly ESANDA Finanz and Leasing Ltd.) H-2, Connaught Circus, New Delhi-110001, which was a non-banking financial company, registered under the provisions of the Reserve Bank of India Act, 1934 and the subject assessments relate to assessment of chargeable interest for these assessment years for the determination of the liability under the Act.
(2.) AT the outset, it is to be noticed that these assessments were concluded by the assessing authority and by reopening the earlier assessments and by issuing of notices under S. 10 of the Act on the premise that interest attributable to what is known as hire-purchase transactions which the assessee company had not been brought to tax in the corresponding assessment years, though the assessee had filed returns of chargeable interest and assessment orders had also been passed, but had escaped assessment due to the reasons of non-disclosure of true and precise interest component or interest income from hire-purchase transactions, which the assessee claimed it had carried on.
(3.) MORE interestingly, while the assessee had not specifically mentioned these amounts either as interest in respect of any of these transactions in the returns of income filed nor did it indicate as an amount which is otherwise not chargeable under the provisions of the Act in Part III of the Form 1 -a prescribed format in which return of interest was required to be submitted by the assessee -nevertheless these amounts had been indicated to be income from hire-purchase transactions as indicated in the P&L a/c which was part of the returns of income-tax purpose and a copy of which was also appended to the return filed under the Act.