The citation that wasn't! Now-withdrawn tax tribunal order triggers AI misuse concerns

A recent retracted order by the Bengaluru bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal has sparked intense discussion around the use of generative AI. According to a report by The Mint, the order by the tax tribunal had cited court ‘fictitious’ judgments in the now-withdrawn order. This means that the verdicts quoted in the retracted order do not exist in the official records.

The Mint report said that the tax tribunal’s order had cited a judgment by the Madras High Court and three verdicts by the Supreme Court. The Mint report says that these verdicts were not found in the official archives. The report said that the ITAT order had listed four orders - K Rukmani Ammal vs K Balakrishnan (1973) 91 ITR 631 (Madras High Court) and S Gurunarayana vs S Narasimhulu (2004) 7 SCC 472 (Supreme Court of India), Sudhir Gopi v Usha Gopi (2018) 14 SCC 452 (Supreme Court of India) and 57 ITR 232(SC).

The media report said that out of these, two did not exist and other two led to led to a totally different cases in the official record. Citing ‘inadvertent errors,’ the tax tribunal had withdrawn the December order.

The verdict was regarding taxability of a transaction involving the Buckeye Trust. Giving details of the now-retracted order, the Mint report said that the tax tribunal had passed an order citing ‘similar’ verdicts in the past. Later, it was found that those cases didn’t exist. The Mint report said that there are concerns that the tax department’s representative may have used the AI tool for preparing his arguments. However, no official statement has been issued by the either CBDT or ITAT on the matter.