Section 489: presumption as to assets, books of account, etc., in prosecution

What the section covers

Where, during a search under Section 247, money, bullion, jewellery, a virtual digital asset or other valuable article or thing, or books of account, documents, or information in electronic form or on a computer system (as defined in Section 261), is found in the possession or control of a person, and that material is tendered by the prosecution as evidence against that person (or against that person and a person referred to in Section 484) for an offence under the Act, the presumption in Section 247(7) applies, so far as may be, to that material.

The same presumption applies where the material was instead taken into custody under a requisition (Section 248(1)(a), (b) or (c)) and delivered to the requisitioning officer, and is likewise tendered as evidence in a prosecution.

Why this matters

Without a provision like this, the prosecution would need to separately re-establish, from scratch, facts about ownership, authenticity and truth of contents for search material each time it's used in a criminal case - even though those facts were already presumable under Section 247(7) for assessment purposes. Section 489 carries that evidentiary shortcut over into the prosecution context, so the same search material can be relied on consistently across both the tax assessment and any related criminal proceeding.

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