Thursday, July 20, 2017

Dept. can’t deny PAN correction in TDS return for more than 4 characters: HC

Facts:

a) CPC-TDS has provided an online facility to correct invalid PAN mentioned in TDS return. The online system of department is programmed to permit correction only in case four digits/characters of PAN are to be changed and no more.

b) In the instant case, entire PAN number of the recipient of the payment was wrongly fed by the assessee-company and the on-line system of the department didn’t permit to carry out changes in PAN in excess of four digits/characters.

c) Assessee challenged the action of the revenue in not permitting it to correct the error in mentioning the PAN before the High Court.

The High Court in favour of assessee as under:

1) Once the department recognizes the possibility of errors and also makes provisions for making corrections, it would be wholly illogical to limit such corrections on arithmetical working out of only two alphabets or two numeric of PAN characters.

2) Error in feeding an entry or a number may have multiple origins from typographical error of Data Entry Operation to mechanical failures or through pure oversight referring to one column of PAN instead of another while filling up and uploading the statement.

3) It is not necessary nor possible for us to envisage different situations under which such errors could crop up and it need not necessarily be confined to limited figures on the letters of the PAN being incorrect. 4) Therefore, decision of department in not permitting the petitioner to correct PAN of the deductee in the statement of tax deducted at source was impermissible. [2017] 83 taxmann.com 205 (Gujarat)

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