JUDGMENT
POLLOCK, J. – This is an application under Section 66(3) of the Income-tax Act. For the year 1933-34 the applicant submitted a return showing a loss of income during the year. The Income-tax Officer refused to accept this and issued notices to the applicant under Section 22(4) calling upon him to produce his accounts and under Section 23(2) calling upon him to produce his evidence. The applicant failed to appear or produce his accounts or evidence. He was therefore assessed under Section 23(4), and his application under section 27 that that assessment should be cancelled and a fresh assessment made was rejected.
2. The only point argued in this court is whether there was in the words of Section 27 sufficient cause for the applicants not making the return required and whether that point is a question of law. In this application under section 27 the applicant gave two reasons of his failure to produce accounts, (1) that his ward or partner Godhaji had obstructed him, and (2) that he was ill. The only evidence that he offered of these was the evidence of three witness who disposed that he was ill at the time. The Income-tax Officer declined to accept the plea of sickness as sufficient cause and rejected the application. In this appeal against that order the applicant contended that his account books had been locked up by the police. He had not given evidence of that in the application under Section 27, nor relied on it. On the evidence adduced before the Income-tax Officer he was entitled to hold that there was not sufficient cause for the applicants failure to comply with the notice, and the question whether there was sufficient cause or not appears to me to be clearly a pure question of fact, as was held by the Privy Council in commissioner of Income-tax, United and central Provinces v. Laxminarain Badridas, Akola, (I.L.R. 1937 Nag. 191).
The application is therefore rejected with costs, Counsels fee Rs. 75.
