SC to decide if heart be treated as plant for I-T claim
Can an individual’s heart be treated as a “plant or machinery” to help him claim income tax waiver on expenses incurred on his heart surgery?
The Supreme Court on Monday decided to adjudicate this “interesting” question of law as to whether a person’s heart can be regarded as a “plant or machinery” to grant tax waiver.
A bench of justices D K Jain and A R Dave admitted a petition filed by former Union Law Minister Shanti Bhushan, challenging a Delhi High Court order.
The court had dismissed the senior advocate’s plea for granting him tax exemption on the expenses incurred on his heart surgery in December, 1978 in Houston in the US.
Bhushan claimed tax waiver relying upon the Income Tax Act’s Section 31 providing for grant of deduction in levy of income tax if the expenses incurred are on “repairs and insurance of machinery, plant and furniture.”
In his plea, Bhushan claimed the cost on his surgery, conducted after he suffered a heart attack in December 1978, be treated as the cost incurred in repairing a plant as “the repair of his vital organ was directly related to his professional competence.”
