The tax report at [2021] 433 ITR 177 (Kar) involved bunch of cases of cooperative societies who defaulted in filing their returns within due date alleging delay on account of following reasons:
A. Not aware of provisions of the Income-tax Act,
B. First year of filing ,
C. Absence of secretary,
D. Mistake in the Permanent Account Number
S. Small account
The revenue rejected their claim of deduction u/s 80P in such returns by invoking section 80AC.
The High Court of Karnataka chose to prefer a delhi tribunal decision over the High Court decision in a previous instance .
Following such decision the Court held that the authority ought to be liberal in condoning the delay and that the provisions of section 80AC could not come in the way of extending the benefit of deduction under section 80P of the Act with reference to cases of genuine hardships. More so the Court indirectly upheld the legal view formed by the delhi Tribunal in restating that the legislature itself has allowed the assessee to file return belatedly subject to fulfillment of conditions written in the said section. Therefore, once those conditions are met, then return filed by the assessee would for all technical purposes be considered being filed u/s 139(1) so that the claim for deduction could not be denied.