DEPUTY COMMISSIONER Vs. YOCOS FAMILY TRUST

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS revision is filed by the Revenue. The matter relates to the Agricultural Income Tax Act. The assessment year is 1981-82. The question involved in this case is with regard to the status allotted. In the return of the income the assessee has claimed the status as tenants-in-common consisting of four members which included his wife, son and daughter. The Assessing Authority allotted the status as tenants-in-common only for the assessee and his son. His wife and daughter was excluded. The first Appellate Authority also agreed with the findings of the Assessing Authority.

(2.) THE appellant filed appeal before the Tribunal. The Tribunal held that the assessee's family constituted a Hindu undivided family and when the coming into force of the Kerala Joint Hindu Family System (Abolition) Act, 1975 from 1st December 1976 there was notional partition of the properties of the persons and hence, the tenants-in-common are the assessee's wife, son and daughter. The Tribunal found that the effect of S.4 (1) of the Abolition Act would be that the assessee's son, wife and daughter would hold the properties as tenants-in-common. It is against that this revision is filed.

(3.) IN Dy. Commissioner of Sales Tax v. R. S. Chidambaram 1993 KLJ (Tax Cases) 576, it was held as follows: "We are of the view the Agricultural Income Tax Appellate Tribunal has wholly misunderstood the nature of the property obtained by the respondent as per the partition deed dated 29th March 1975. It is true that the properties so partitioned were obtained by the respondent/ assessee in a partition between himself, his brother and his father. They were ancestral properties............But, the crucial question is whether the respondent's wife, the only other member in the family or unit, had any right in the said separate property. Admittedly, she is not a coparcener. She is, if at all, only a female member of the family. She is not entitled to claim partition. She is not entitled to any property." Thus, in this case, the Tribunal was wrong in holding that the assessee along with his wife and children will be entitled to hold the properties as tenants-in-common.