The Supreme Court in a split judgment left unresolved the long standing issue of interplay between Section 144C-Section 153 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (‘IT Act, 1961’). The absence of a clear resolution while not ideal, provides an insight into different interpretive attitudes towards procedural issues in tax. In this article, I make a few broad points on the interpretive approaches both the judges adopted when faced with a question that did not have a clear answer, but at the same time, a question seems to have acquired more complexity than warranted.
Issue
The panoramic question was: whether timelines for ‘specific assessments’ in Section 144C of the Income Tax Act, 1961 (‘IT Act, 1961’) are independent of or subsumed in the general timelines for assessments provided in Section 153 of the IT Act, 1961?
Section 144C provides the procedure and timelines for a specific kind of assessments which typically involve foreign companies. If the assessing officer makes any change in the assessment which is prejudicial to the assessee, then Section 144C prescribes a procedure which includes forwarding a draft assessment order to the assessee. If the assessee has any objections after receiving the draft assessment order, it may approach the Dispute Resolution Panel (‘DRP’). Section 144C, in turn, empowers DRP to issue binding directions to the assessing officer. And the latter has to complete the assessment as per the said directions. Section 153, in comparison, is a general provision which prescribes timelines for completion of assessments and reassessments. The assessing officer ordinarily has 12 months, after the end of a financial year, to complete any assessment.
Opinions that do not ‘Converse’
In the impugned case, both judges framed the issue identically but answered it in diametrically opposite fashion. The divergent conclusions were a result of the different interpretive approaches adopted by both judges and their differing opinions as to what each of them considered relevant factors to adjudicate the case. The jarring part is that there seems to be no single point of consensus between the two judges. At the same time, while Justice Nagarathna does mention some points of disagreement with Justice SC Sharma’s opinion, the latter does not even mention or even superficially engage with her opinion. And consequently, Justice SC Sharma fails to tell us as to why he disagrees with Justice Nagarathna. It is left for us to arrive at our deductions and conclusions. I indulge in a preliminary attempt at this exercise and identify how both judges approached the issue and interpreted the relevant provisions and their respective reasonings.
Modes Of Interpretation
It is trite that tax statutes need to be interpreted strictly. Justice Nagarathna in her opinion went into significant detail about the appropriate interpretive approach in tax law disputes and cited various judicial precedents to lend support to her view of the necessity of strict interpretation. One offshoot of the doctrine of strict interpretation is that if the provision(s) is clear, plain, and unambiguous and inviting only one meaning, the courts are bound to give effect to that meaning irrespective of the consequences. It is this interpretive approach that guided her opinion that the issue of interplay between Section 144C-Section 153 was simply of statutory interpretation. She added that courts should not opine about the adequacy of the timelines available to the assessing officer or to the assessee as it would undermine the cardinal principles of tax law interpretation. So, if a strict interpretation of the provisions meant that an assessing officer would have limited time to complete assessments, so be it. It is for the Parliament to look into the adequacy of time available to the officers and assessees, not courts.
Justice SC Sharma had no qualms – superficial or otherwise – about the need to follow strict interpretation. His approach was of a ‘balancing act’, literally. He clearly says that the Court must be alive to the ‘fine balance’ that needs to be maintained between tax officers having sufficient time to scrutinise income tax returns to prevent tax evasion and the right of assessees to not have their returns scrutinised after a certain amount of time. And in doing so, he stresses on the need for harmonious interpretation, the need to make various provisions of the IT Act, 1961 work. As is wont, a balancing act tends to lead to a half-baked solution. And Justice SC Sharma’s conclusion is one such solution where he concludes that the timelines prescribed in Section 153 are not completely irrelevant to Section 144C. The assessing officer is bound to complete the draft assessment order within the timelines mentioned in Section 153, and not the final assessment order. So he binds the assessing officer to complete half a job within the timeline prescribed by Section 153, but not the complete job. As per him, the final assessment order can be passed even after the limit set of Section 153. This is certainly not a strict interpretation of tax law provisions, but a judge’s subjective view of what is a ‘reasonable time’ for an assessing officer to complete an assessment.
Relevance of Administrative Inconvenience
Justice SC Sharma’s opinion is littered with his concern for tax officers of this country and their inability to complete assessments in a short time if the time period under Section 144C is interpreted to be subsumed in the time period provided in Section 153. He stated that in such a scenario, the tax officer will have to work ‘backwards’ and allow for a period of nine months to the DRP. As per Section 144C, if an assessee objects to the draft assessment order and refers it to a DRP, the latter has nine months to issue directions to the officer for completion of assessment and its directions are binding on the assessing officer. So, the assessing officer has to complete the draft assessment order by anticipating that objections may be raised before DRP, else the final assessment may not be completed within the timeline prescribed in Section 153. Justice Sharma was of the opinion that the Parliament ‘could not have conceived’ such a procedure to be followed by an assessing officer. The root cause of his concern was that the time window to complete the final assessment would be ‘negligible’ since ordinarily an assessment is to be completed within 12 months from end of the financial year in which the remand order is received from the tribunal. And this narrow time window, in his view, would ‘result in a complete catastrophe for recovering lost tax.’
Justice Nagarathana, however, dismissed the concern of unworkability of timelines. She said that failure of the assessing officer to meet the statutory timeline cannot be the basis of assuming any absurdity. The Revenue argued that if an assessing officer has to work backwards, the timelines may not be met, leading to an absurdity. I do agree with Justice Nagarathana that if for a specific set of assesses the assessing officers have to work backwards to respect the timelines, it does not make the provisions unworkable or absurd. How is working backwards to accommodate statutory prescribed timelines an absurd position? An assessing officer has to essentially accommodate nine months of time accorded to DRP in Section 144C and issue a draft assessment order accounting for that time. The actual absurdity is in the Revenue’s argument that an assessing officer accounting for the time that DRP may consume is a ground for extending statutory prescribed timelines.
Also, Justice Nagarathana made it clear that merely because the assessee may opt for raising objections against the draft assessment order and approach the DRP cannot be a factor for increasing the timeline. The assessee cannot be prejudiced for exercising a right prescribed in the statute. Justice SC Sharma’s opinion though suggests that the exact opposite and implies that the assessee exercising the right to file objections and approach DRP is a good reason to extend timelines. And in implying so, he adopts a tenuous position.
Impact of Non Obstante Clause(s)
Our tax statutes contain non-obstante clauses galore, but their import and impact is understood differently based on the context. In the impugned case, Justice Nagarathana noted that the context and legislative intent of a non-obstante clause is vital to understand its import. Applying the above dictum, she held that the non-obstante clause in Section 144C(1) was only regarding the special procedure prescribed in the provision and not for the timelines enlisted in Section 153. She elaborated that Section 144C is only applicable to ‘eligible assessees’ and the provision mandates the assessing officer to forward a draft assessment order, while in all other cases a final assessment order is issued directly. Since Section 144C prescribes a special procedure for the eligible assessees, it overrides only those provisions of the IT Act, 1961 which prescribe a different procedure. Section 144C does not override all the provisions of the IT Act, 1961.
Based on the above reasoning, Justice Nagarathana concluded that the effect of non-obstante clause of Section 144C(1) is not to override Section 153. But why? This is because as per Justice Nagarathana, the latter was not contrary to the former. She added that if Section 144C is construed to extend the limitation period prescribed under Section 153, it would lead to an ‘absurd result’ as the scope and ambit of two provisions is distinct. She was clear that Section 153 prescribes timelines for assessments and reassessments while Section 144C prescribes procedure for a specific set of eligible assessees. In other words, Section 153 controls the timelines for all assessments while Section 144C controls procedure for specific assessments that may encompass only a limited set of assessees. Thus, both provisions had different scope and were not at odds with each other.
One can also understand the above interpretive dilemma as an occasion where a judge faced with the relation between a general and specific provision, held that the former should serve the object and aims of the latter. Section 153 is certainly a general provision, and the timelines prescribed in it must be respected by a narrower and more specific provision such as Section 144C. Latter cannot operate at odds with the former and defeat the larger objective of completing assessments within prescribed time periods.
Justice SC Sharma’s emphasis was on the non-obstante clauses in Section 144C(4) and Section 144C(13) which specifically override Section 153. Both these sub-sections mention the assessing officer’s obligation to pass a final assessment order. Both these sub-sections obligate an assessing officer to pass a final assessment order within one month (approximately) of receiving the assessee’s acceptance and DRP’s directions respectively. Justice Sharma somehow reads into the non-obstante clauses in these two sub-sections the idea that their effect was to only extend the timeline for passing a final assessment order and not the draft assessment order. He concluded that an assessing officer will have to complete the draft assessment order within the limitations stated in Section 153.
Justice Sharma insisted that the non-obstante clauses must be construed to ‘not defeat’ the working of the IT Act, 1961 and ensure a harmonious construction of both the provisions. However, the real reason was his belief that if timelines of cases in Section 144C were subsumed in Section 153, it would be ‘practically impossible’ to complete the assessments. As discussed above, Justice Nagarathana was clear – and rightly so – that such a belief should have no role in interpretation of tax statutes. Also, Justice Sharma added that the assessing officer only acts in an executing capacity once the draft assessment order is passed, since the no new fresh issues can be raised thereafter. The implication being that the draft assessment order issued under Section 144C is effectively a final assessment order. This is convoluted phrasing and also an inaccurate understanding of assessment orders.
Use of ‘Internal’ and ‘External’ Aids for Interpretation
In the context of this discussion, let me say that an internal aid for interpretation can be understood be other provisions of the IT Act, 1961. While an external aid can include the Parliamentary discussions, committee reports, etc. Both the judges referred to external aids in the impugned case and tried to understand the rationale of impugned provisions, especially Section 144C, by citing memorandums and explanatory notes of the relevant finance acts. Justice Nagarathna cited them in significant detail and one can see that her conclusion was influenced by these external aids. The Finance Minister, when introducing the amendment via which Section 144C was inserted in the IT Act, 1961 had mentioned the need to improve climate for tax disputes, expedite the dispute resolution process, and provide an alternate dispute resolution process. Since the assessees that would benefit from Section 144C would primarily be foreign companies, the aim was to signal a more receptive tax environment for foreign investment. If expediting dispute resolution process was one of the aims of Section 144C, one could argue it was a reasonable deduction that timelines of Section 144C were subsumed in timelines of Section 153. Holding otherwise would delay the process instead of expediting it. And Justice Nagarathna was partially influenced by the purpose of introducing Section 144C before arriving at her conclusion.
Justice SC Sharma’s reliance on external aid was comparatively much more limited. He cited the relevant extracts that explained the need for Section 144C, but his focus was more on the need to harmoniously interpret Section 144C and Section 153. He tried to reason that his conclusions were aimed at making sure the IT Act, 1961 remained workable and absurdities were avoided. He primarily relied on internal aids, i.e., other provisions of the IT Act, 1961 to defend his conclusions that he said were aimed to ensure harmony amongst the various statutory provisions.
While We Await Another Judicial Opinion
Until a three-judge bench weighs in with their opinion, the interplay of Section 144C-Section 153 obviously remains without a clear answer. On balance, the reasoning adopted by Justice Nagarathna is more aligned to classical principles of tax law interpretation. But, the Indian Supreme Court has an uneven record in tax law matters and predicting what may happen next is as good as rolling the dice. In recent times, the Supreme Court’s uneven history on tax matters includes but is not limited to providing remedy to the Revenue Department without them even making a request for it. Or adopting gymnast worthy legal fictions and altering the concept of time to ostensibly balance the rights of the Revenue and the assessees. Thus, there is no predicting the outcome of this dispute, though I can go out on a limb and say that the relevant provision(s) maybe amended, and retrospectively so, if the Income Tax Department does not agree with the final verdict. Such amendments are certainly not unheard of!
