SC admits Bhushan plea for I-T waiver on surgery cost

He quotes Section 37 of the Income-Tax Act,which allows income-tax waiver if the expenses incurred are for the current repairs of a plant crucial for the patients profession.

To prove that a human organ like the heart can be treated as a plant,Bhushan shows a 1986 case law Scientific Engineering House P. Ltd versus Commissioner of Income Tax which defines the term as any article or object fixed or movable,live or dead,used by a businessman for carrying on his business and it is not necessarily confined to an apparatus which is used for mechanical operations or processes or is employed in mechanical or industrial business.

Bhushan compares the case of his heart to a bowler who sustains injury in his bowling finger and may have to incur a huge expense in an operation on his finger so that he could continue to bowl well and continue to earn good income by his profession. Or a vocalist who has to repair his vocal chords to sustain in his profession.

Should or should not such expense be a deductible expense? he asks a Bench led by Justice D K Jain.

The Income-Tax Tribunal had earlier concluded that unlike a bowlers finger and the singers vocal chords,the lawyer only used his brain for his profession and not his heart,and the expense incurred on the operation of the heart could not be allowed as a deductible expense.