BHIKHI RAM RAMDEO Vs. COMMISSIONER OF INCOME TAX

JUDGEMENT

(1.) THIS is an application under Section 66(3) of the Income-tax Act (XI of 1922).

(2.) THE assessee applied to the Income-tax Officer under Section 27 of the Act, but his application was dismissed. He then appealed to the Assistant Commissioner both from the assessment order which had been made under Section 23(4) and also from the order of dismissal in respect to the application under Section 27. THE Assistant Commissioner, for reasons which appear in his order and which we shall consider at a later stage, was of opinion that the assessment had properly been made under Section 23(4) of the Act and that no appeal lay having regard to the proviso to Section 30, and he accordingly refused to admit it; and he dismissed the appeal from the order of the Income-tax Officer under Section 27 of the Act.

(3.) IT is thus clear that if a particular assessment can be said to have been as assessment made under Section 23(4), there will be no appeal by reason of the aforesaid proviso to Section 30 and consequently there will be no order under Section 31. But learned counsel for the assessee contends that when the Income-tax Officer called upon him to produce subsidiary books of account, he was being required to do the impossible inasmuch as he had no such books, and therefore it cannot be said that there was any proper assessment under Section 23(4). We had occasion to consider an almost exactly similar question in Sheoduttrai Pannalal v. Commissioner of Income-tax, C.P.& U.P. (1)(1941) 9 I.T.R. 118, in which a large number of authorities were reviewed; and the following observation from the judgment in that case may usefully be re-produced here. We said :-