Penalties: §270A, §271D and the preconditions the Department skips

Penalty proceedings fail more often on preconditions than on merits. Section 271D requires a recorded finding of a section 269SS violation before any penalty can issue; section 270A requires actual under-reporting, not a reconciliation difference the assessee never controlled. The Department's standard-form orders routinely skip both requirements.

The rulings collected here hold those lines: the Andhra Pradesh High Court deleting a 271D penalty levied without any independent finding of the 269SS breach, and the Nagpur Tribunal refusing 270A where the interest variance traced to a bank's delayed Form 26AS reporting rather than anything the assessee suppressed.

The practitioner pattern across penalty defence is the same: fix the record. Identify the statutory precondition, show where the order fails to establish it, and keep the contemporaneous evidence (the 26AS as filed, the loan documentation) that proves the client's position was reasonable when taken.