Kerala High Court: A 2-Judge Bench comprising of K.Vinod Chandran and Ashok Menon, JJ. dealt with an appeal against the order of Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, where order of first appellate authority was affirmed. It was found that sale of assessee’s land comes under exception of capital gains under Section 45 of the Income Tax Act, 1961 and hence was not taxable.
Assessee is alleged with not declaring capital gain in the income return filed when he sold his property to the owners of a newspaper. Assessee contended that the land in question is an agricultural land and thus is not taxable. Assessee only showed a certificate issued by Village Officer as an evidence to show land as agricultural. Court found that this certificate could not have been relied on as it was issued after sale. Assessee submitted that under Section 2(14) of the Act according to which only those land come under the category of capital asset which comes under (a), (b) of clause (iii).
The High Court stated that merely the fact that land does not come under above provision does not exclude property from the definition of capital asset. High Court viewed that assessee had failed to show that the land in question was an agricultural land thus sale of this land would be taxable under the Act. Therefore, orders of first appellate authority and the Tribunal were set aside. [Principal Commissioner of Income Tax v. Kalathingal Faizal Rahman, 2018 SCC OnLine Ker 3239, decided on 02-07-2018]
