High Court Of Delhi
CIT vs. Herbalife International Ind.
Section 2(13)
Asst. Year 1999-2000 & 2000-01
Madan B. Lokur & V.B. Gupta, JJ.
IT Appeal No. 599 of 2006
10th January, 2007
Counsel Appeared :
Ms. P.L. Bansal, for the Appellant : Prakash Kumar, for the Respondent
ORDER
By the court :
The Revenue is aggrieved by an order dt. 30th Aug., 2005 passed by the Tribunal, Delhi Bench ‘A’ in ITA Nos. 3098 and 2664/Del/2004 relevant for the asst. yrs. 1999-2000 and 2000-01.
The only issue that has been raised in this appeal filed under s. 260A of the IT Act, 1961 is with regard to the date of commencement of business of the assessee.
According to the Revenue, the assessee had commenced business on 15th Sept., 1999 whereas according to the assessee, business was commenced much earlier, that is, on 9th Feb., 1999 when it entered into an agreement with M/s Dominion Chemical Industries Ltd. (DCIL).
The assessee is engaged in trading of health care and nutritional products as mentioned by it in its return of income. It had declared a total loss of about Rs. 24 lakhs which had been claimed to be carried forward as business loss. The assessee had entered into an agreement dt. 9th Feb., 1999 with DCIL, who was appointed as a supplier of the assessee. Purchase orders were placed with DCIL in March, 1999 and DCIL had in turn, placed orders with different vendors. Copies of these orders are available on record. Notwithstanding this, the AO was of the view that the assessee had not commenced its business on 9th Feb., 1999. This view was accepted by the CIT(A). However, in appeal the Tribunal disagreed with the authorities below after taking into consideration the facts of the case.
It was noted by the learned Tribunal that transactions have been entered into between the assessee and DCIL in terms of the agreement dt. 9th Feb., 1999. In fact, a purchase order dt. 9th March, 1999 exactly one month after the agreement was entered into has been placed on record. This shows that the agreement was acted upon by the parties. To contend that in spite of this the assessee had not commenced its business and it had in fact commenced the business only in September, 1999 is based on a surmise which was not warranted on the basis of the correspondence on record.
We are of the view that the issue raised is essentially a question of fact that has been arrived at. The decision arrived at by the Tribunal does not appear to be perverse in any case and, therefore, there is no merit in the appeal.
Accordingly, the appeal is dismissed.
[Citation : 297 ITR 303]
