O R D E R

% 20.08.2024

1. Pursuant to the liberty granted by us on the previous occasion, learned counsel for the appellant has placed the following revised questions of law proposed for our consideration in these appeals and which are extracted hereinbelow:

“1. Whether the Appellate Tribunal (Delhi) below correctly decided the issue of commission without any observation concerning the ground no. 5 which was taken by the Appellant before the Tribunal for deletion of entire commission of 1.4%.

2. Whether the Appellate Tribunal (Delhi) failed to appreciate the fact that the documents seized under 132 and 132(A) of the Income Tax Act, 1961 have to have some Evidenciary value qua the ITA 760/2023 & 761/2023 Page 1 of 6 Appellant (assessee herein) for the purpose of having a reason to the believe that the said document is having nexus with Appellant’s (Assessee) income.

3. Whether the Appellate Tribunal (Delhi) below had gone wrong in determining and deciding the question of fact in dispute without conducting any examination and scrutiny of the documents and material on record of the lower authorities as the inference and conclusion was derived without appreciating the true facts leading to an order bad in law and against the facts of the case.

4. Whether the Tribunal below acted in contradiction to law while deciding the issue of commission, without even considering any of the documents so considered by the Lower Authorities while deciding & determining issue of commission.

5. Whether the Tribunal below acted in contradiction to law to have inferred and concluded certain issues of commission without going in to the true facts of the case and without appreciating the documents on record.”

2. On both the appeals, the solitary ground which was essentially pressed was with respect to the computation of commission income which was liable to be recognised as taxable in the hands of the appellants.

3. From the order of the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals)1, we note that insofar as commission income is concerned, the said authority had taken note of the copious findings of fact which had come to be rendered by the Assessing Officer2 in previous years. For instance and insofar as Assessment Year3 2012-13 is concerned, the AO had found as follows:

“2012-13

13. During the year under consideration, the assessee, in his return of income has shown income from salary, profit and gains from business, and income from other sources.

14 Vide questionnaire dated 05.03.2015 the assessee was confronted with the fact that the enquiries made by the department revealed that the companies from whom the share capital/share

1 CIT(A)

2 AO 3 AY ITA 760/2023 & 761/2023 Page 2 of 6 premium is shown to have been received by M/s Garden View Foods Pvt. Ltd., M/s Nihantri Realtors Pvt. Ltd. and Geemed Promoters Pvt. Ltd. during the financial years 2010-11 and 2011- 12 had no financial parameters to invest such huge amounts in these companies because the directors of those companies are neither traceable nor have they complied to the summons issued to them and further that the conduct of bank accounts of these companies establishes the fact that these are mere paper companies formed only to provide entries to other companies/entities. From this, it transpires that the money shown to have been received from the said non-est companies by your companies M/s Garden View Foods Pvt. Ltd., M/s Nihantri Realtors Pvt. Ltd. and Geemed Promoters Pvt. Ltd. during the financial years 2010-11 and 2011-12 as share capital/share premium also remains unexplained and this also shows that these three companies are also entry operators formed for the purpose of providing entries to other companies. Since the assessee is the Director in these three companies, based on the calculation of commission appearing on page 66 to 68 of Annexure A-3 seized from assessee's Noida residence where commission @ 1.4% is shown to have been received by him, he was asked to explain why commission on the same rate of