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Summary: The Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, Cuttack Bench, comprising Shri George Mathan, Judicial Member, and Shri Manish Agarwal, Accountant Member, allowed the appeal of Arati Saraf for Assessment Year 2017-18 and deleted a penalty of ₹5,22,000 imposed under Section 271D of the Income-tax Act, 1961 for alleged violation of Section 269SS. The Assessing Officer received information from the Directorate of Income Tax (Intelligence and Criminal Investigation), Bhubaneswar, that the assessee had received ₹5,22,000 in cash as consideration for transferring immovable property. The Joint Commissioner imposed an equivalent penalty, which the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals), National Faceless Appeal Centre, Delhi, confirmed.
The assessee explained that she had incurred substantial debts for her daughter’s marriage on 11 March 2016 and was compelled to sell the property to discharge those liabilities. She submitted that receiving cash under these circumstances constituted reasonable cause within the meaning of Section 273B. She also argued that the amount was not an advance towards a proposed property transfer but the entire sale consideration received at the time of registration of the sale deed. Consequently, the penalty provisions of Section 269SS read with Section 271D were, according to her, wrongly invoked. The Revenue maintained that the statutory expression “specified sum” covered money received in connection with the transfer of immovable property, whether as an advance or otherwise.
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