No Government has the right to cause misery and harassment to the taxpayer
"EVERY Government has a right to levy taxes. But no Government has the right, in the process of extracting tax, to cause misery and harassment to the taxpayer and the gnawing feeling that he is made the victim of palpable injustice"
IN a judgement in yet another Vodafone case delivered on Friday (29th November 2013), the Bombay High Court extracted the above quote from NaniPalkhiwala's monumental work “The Law and Practice of Income Tax” and observed,
The revenue would do well to keep the above sage advice in mind while dealing with the assessee. We are constrained to observe that in this case it would be natural for the petitioner to feel harassed as the Assessing Officer did not give any opportunity of hearing before making a reference to the TPO and none of the two authorities viz. the TPO and the Assessing Officer dealt with its preliminary objection. The TPO does not deal with the petitioner's objection about applicability of Chapter X, on the ground that it would be dealt with by the Assessing officer. Thereafter when the petitioner raises the same issue before the Assessing Officer he does not deal with the same on the ground that he is bound to complete the assessment in terms of the ALP determined by the TPO. We hope the revenue will be more sensitive to the just demands of the assessee and not treat the assessee as an adversary who has to be taxed, no matter what .
This case was reported in 2013-TII-17-HC-MUM-TP