MARG LIMITED Vs. COMMISSIONER OF INCOME TAX

JUDGEMENT

(1.) What seems to be the settled legal position repeated times over by various High Courts and even Hon'ble Supreme Court of India, still seems to have not settled down upon the final fact finding Tribunal under the Income Tax Act with reference to Section 14A read with rather badly drafted or rather hugely misinterpreted Rule 8D of the Income Tax Rules, 1962.

(2.) This appears to be more so on account of lack of judicial discipline which deserves to be maintained by the Sub-ordinate Courts and Tribunals, while the controversies are dealt with by them and which are covered by judgments of Constitutional Courts. But, without proper application of the judgments of the Constitutional Courts, such Tribunals continue to take illogical views citing some of their own precedents rendered by their own Coordinate Benches on the said issues without assigning any reasons why the law applicable on the subject is not applicable to the facts before them. Such unscrupulous tendency on the part of the Tribunals is the main reason for continuous inflow of litigation on the same point of law in the Constitutional Courts, which entails loss of precious time of Courts and learned counsel appearing in the matter and unnecessary litigation expenditure and also loss of man hours.

(3.) The question of law involved in the present appeal under Section 260A of the Income Tax Act before us has been dealt with and is being decided in the present Covid times when the Courts are functioning through virtual hearings of the matters through video conferencing. What was settled by the Co-ordinate Bench of Madras High Court itself and other High Courts like Karnataka, Delhi, Punjab and Haryana and Hon'ble Supreme Court in the case of Maxopp Investment Ltd. v. Commissioner of Income Tax,2018 91 taxman 154(SC). that 'the disallowance of expenditure incurred to earn exempted income under Section 14A of the Income Tax Act, cannot exceed such exempt income itself during the relevant assessment year' is still sought to be re-agitated in the present appeal filed by the Assessee because the Tribunal took a wrong view of the matter and the learned counsel for the Revenue still wanted us to give it a second thought.