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Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, JODHPUR BENCH : : JODHPUR
Before: SHRI PAVAN KUMAR GADALE & DR. DIPAK P. RIPOTE
आदेश/ ORDER
PER DR. DIPAK P. RIPOTE, AM:
This is an appeal filed by the assessee against the order of ld.CIT(A)-1, Udaipur dated 18.06.2018 emanating from assessment order under section 143(3) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 dated 28.10.2016. The grounds of appeal are as under : The penalty order u/s 271B of the act dated 26.04.2017 passed by the assessing officer is wholly incorrect in law, and against the principle of natural justice.
The Ld. AO mentioned in his order that the Chartered accountant of the assesse or the assesse himself knowing the facts i.e filing of online incomplete audit report which was totally Injustified because the assesse as well as Chartered accountant were unknown for this error .During the Scrutiny assessment proceeding the Ld. AO has not commented any adverse remarks on books of accounts.
The Ld. AO imposed a penalty of Rs 46980/- u/s 271B of the IT Act, 1961 for not getting accounts. audited by CA, which is unjustifiable on the ground that the assesse has obtained the audit report before due date of filing such audit report i.e on 25.11.2014 , so penalty u/s 271B cannot be levied on the ground that the assesse had not obtained complete audit report, further the assesse has a reasonable cause that the original audit report which was filed on 25.11.2014 had contained all the relevant information AO also not considered this ground on behalf of section 273B ,and did not consider the cause as reasonable cause ,as a reasonable cause u/s 273B of the IT Act 1961.
We had not provided with proper opportunity of being heard by Ld. AO.
The Ld. CIT(A) has not considered reasonable cause in her order of appeal, which we have submitted in favor of our assesse at the time of hearing of appeal with Ld. CIT (A).
1.1 At the outset of hearing, no one appeared on behalf of the assessee. Findings & Analysis : 2. It is observed that the Assessing Officer(AO) has levied penalty under section 271B of the Act on account of filing incomplete Audit Report online. The AO stated that certain columns of the online Audit Report were either left as blank or marked as “0”. The assessee had furnished complete Audit Report before the AO during the assessment proceedings. Assessee claimed that assessee’s Audit Report was signed by Auditor on 25.11.2014 and uploaded on Income Tax Website on 30.11.2014, which was within the due date. However, due to some technical errors, certain column appeared as “0”. Before the AO, assessee had produced complete Audit Report. The AO had not found any mistake in the complete Audit Report manually filed during the assessment proceedings before the AO.
In these facts and circumstances of the case, we agree with the assessee that the errors in the online report were due to “software issues”. We find that this was a reasonable cause, therefore, we direct the AO to delete the penalty under section 271B of the Act. Accordingly, grounds of appeal raised by the assessee are allowed.
In the result, appeal of the assessee is allowed. Order pronounced in the open Court on 30th October, 2023.