Gujarat High Court
Commissioner Of Income Tax ... vs Swashray Foundation on 14 March, 2018
Author: Akil Kureshi
Bench: Akil Kureshi, B.N. Karia
C/TAXAP/157/2018 ORDER
IN THE HIGH COURT OF GUJARAT AT AHMEDABAD
TAX APPEAL No. 157 of 2018
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COMMISSIONER OF INCOME TAX (EXEMPTIONS)
Versus
SWASHRAY FOUNDATION
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Appearance :
Mrs MAUNA M BHATT, Advocate for the PETITIONER(s) No. 1
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CORAM: HONOURABLE Mr. JUSTICE AKIL KURESHI
and
HONOURABLE Mr. JUSTICE B.N. KARIA
14th March 2018
ORAL ORDER (PER : HONOURABLE Mr. JUSTICE AKIL KURESHI)
Revenue is in appeal against the judgment of the Income- Tax Appellate Tribunal, Ahmedabad dated 14th July 2017 raising following question for our consideration :-
"Whether on the facts and in the circumstances of the case and in law, the Appellate tribunal is correct in confirming the order of CIT [A] deleting the undisclosed foreign donation of Rs. 80,93,741/= [US $ 2,00,000/=] which was not shown by the assessee in the Balance Sheet filed along with the return of income for the year under consideration ?"
Page 1 of 3C/TAXAP/157/2018 ORDER Material on record would suggest that though before the Assessing Officer there was no clinching evidence to establish that the donation made to be appropriated to the corpus fund of the Trust. However, before the Commissioner [Appeals], the assessee had placed a copy of letter of the donor in which it was inter alia stated as under :-
"We are intend to give donation to your trust upto US $ 400000 [Four hundred thousand only]. Please forward your F.C Registration number at an early date. The donation is to be given to corpus fund of the trust and be credited accordingly. The income from the corpus fund can be utilized for any charitable object of the trust."
In this view of the matter, CIT had deleted the additions which the Tribunal confirmed, making the following observations :
"4.2 It is pertinent to note that there is no form prescribed for written specific direction under Income-tax Act. However, the specific direction should be written and it should contain the amount which is to be taken as a corpus fund by the donee. Learned CIT further held that he find both the conditions are met by the written specific direction issued by the donor, the copy of which is placed on page no. 6 of the paper-book and he Page 2 of 3 C/TAXAP/157/2018 ORDER was inclined to agree that the sum received by the appellant to the tune of US $ 360 000 was in the nature of corpus donation from Swaminarayan Gurukul, USA. Since it is corpus donation, it cannot be income as per Section 11 [1](d) of the Income Tax Act."
No question of law arises, Tax Appeal is dismissed.
[Akil Kureshi, J.] [B.N Karia, J.] Prakash Page 3 of 3