The Supreme Court will begin the final hearing in December on chartered accountancy firm PricewaterhouseCoopers' plea against a Calcutta high court judgement imposing penalty for alleged evasion of tax by furnishing inaccurate particulars of its income for 2000-01.
A Bench headed by Justice S H Kapadia has posted the matter for the hearing on December 9.
PWC had challenged the Calcutta high court's judgement that held that the firm had failed to furnish its true and correct particulars of accounts while filing the returns.
The high court had also upheld the penalty imposed by the authorities at 100 per cent of the tax alleged to have been evaded.
PWC senior counsel Harish Salve had submitted that the firm had paid the penalty and was not seeking a refund.
PWC had said the penalty under Section 271(1)(c) of the Income Tax Act could not be imposed if there was a bonafide human error on its employee's part while preparing the return.
It said the high court had failed to appreciate that the Income Tax Appelate Tribunal had erred in not deleting the penalty.
In November 2000, PWC had filed returns disclosing a total income of around Rs 21.34 crore. However, after the firm filed its revised returns in February 2004, the income tax department enhanced its total income to Rs 21.89 crore (Rs 218.9 million) and levied a tax of Rs 9,44,000, which was subsequently paid by the firm.
The tax authorities had imposed the penalty at the rate of 300 per cent on PWC for allegedly evading tax by furnishing inaccurate particulars of its income.
The Tribunal had reduced the penalty to 100 per cent on the grounds that the seriousness of the mistake was not so grave, but the high court had refused to delete the penalty.
