a) The assessee purchased three plots of land during the year under consideration and claimed that these plots of land were agricultural lands and would not fall in the definition of capital asset as per the provisions of section 2(14).

b) Assessing Officer (AO) invoked the provisions of section 56(2)(viib) and made an addition, being difference between the sale consideration as per the sale deeds and the stamp valuation determined by the Stamp Valuation Authority.

c) CIT(A) held that the land so purchased was his stock-in-trade and since the stock-in-trade was also excluded from the definition of capital asset, the provisions of section 56(2)(viib) were not attracted. Aggrieved-revenue filed the instant appeal before the ITAT.

The ITAT held in favour of revenue as under:

1) The provisions of section 56(2)(vii)(b) provide that where an individual receives in any previous year, from any person or persons on or after the 1-10-2009 but before 1-4-2017, any immovable property for a consideration which is less than the stamp duty value of the property by an amount exceeding Rs. 50,000, the stamp duty value of such property as exceeds such consideration shall be income chargeable to tax under the head ‘Income from other sources’.

2) On reading of provisions of section 56(2)(vii)(b), it is found that it refers to any immovable property and the same is not circumscribed or limited to any particular nature of immovable property.

3) It refers to any immovable property which by its grammatical meaning would mean all and any property which is immovable in nature, i.e., attached to or forming part of earths surface.

4) In the instant case, the assessee had purchased three plots of agricultural land and such agricultural land was clearly an immovable property. Whether such agriculture land would fall in the definition of capital asset under section 2(14) or whether such agriculture land would be stock-in-trade of the assessee, were issues which couldn’t be read in the definition of ‘any immovable property’ used in context of section 56(2)(vii)(b) and were not relevant.

5) Therefore, the order of the CIT(A) was to be set aside. [2019] 101 taxmann.com 391 (Jaipur – Trib.)