Income Tax dept’s notice against NDTV quashed by Supreme Court

New Delhi, April 3: In relief to NDTV Ltd, the Supreme Court Friday quashed the notice of the Income Tax department seeking to re-assess the income of the media house for financial year 2007-08.

A bench of Justices L Nageswara Rao and Deepak Gupta set aside the August 10, 2017 order of the Delhi High Court which had dismissed the petition of NDTV Ltd against the I-T re-assessment notice.

“We, accordingly, allow the appeal by holding that the notice issued to the assessee (NDTV) shows sufficient reasons to believe on the part of the assessing officer to re-open the assessment but since the revenue has failed to show non-disclosure of facts the notice having been issued after a period of 4 years is required to be quashed,” the bench said.

The I-T department had issued re-assessment notice in March 2015 to the media group after noting that Rs 642 crore has allegedly not been computed for the tax assessment purposes of NDTV for financial year 2007-2008.

It was alleged that media group’s UK based subsidiary, NDTV Network PLC, had issued step-up coupon bonds for amount of USD 100 million in July 2007, through a bank of New York for a period of five years.

Without going into the merits of the case, the top court framed three questions related to the dispute for its consideration which included whether in the facts and circumstances of the case, it can be said that the revenue department had a valid reason to believe that undisclosed income had escaped assessment.

It also framed questions on whether the assessee did not disclose fully and truly all material facts during the course of original assessment which led to the finalisation of assessment order and undisclosed income escaping detection.