The section does one thing: it lists, for the purposes of the Act, the classes of income-tax authority. They are the Central Board of Direct Taxes constituted under the Central Boards of Revenue Act, 1963; Principal Directors General of Income-tax or Principal Chief Commissioners of Income-tax; Directors General of Income-tax or Chief Commissioners of Income-tax; Principal Directors of Income-tax or Principal Commissioners of Income-tax; Directors of Income-tax or Commissioners of Income-tax or Commissioners of Income-tax (Appeals); Additional Directors, Additional Commissioners or Additional Commissioners of Income-tax (Appeals); Joint Directors, Joint Commissioners or Joint Commissioners of Income-tax (Appeals); Deputy Directors or Deputy Commissioners of Income-tax; Assistant Directors or Assistant Commissioners of Income-tax; Income-tax Officers; Tax Recovery Officers; and Inspectors of Income-tax. It confers no power and imposes no duty.
Why it is there
Every operative provision in the Act addresses an officer by designation, so there has to be one place that says which designations exist and in what order. The list is also the hierarchy: it runs from the Board down to Inspectors, and the sequence is what other provisions rely on when they speak of an authority above or below a given rank.
Who it applies to
The Central Board of Direct Taxes
Officers in each of the listed designations, from Principal Director General down to Inspector of Income-tax
Commissioners of Income-tax (Appeals), Additional Commissioners (Appeals) and Joint Commissioners (Appeals), who appear in the list as appellate authorities
Tax Recovery Officers, listed separately from assessing officers
What this means in practice
The list is exhaustive, so a person who is not in one of these classes is not an income-tax authority and cannot exercise a power the Act gives to one. The order matters because other provisions condition an action on approval by an authority not below a stated rank, and this sequence supplies that ranking. Note that the appellate designations sit inside the same list rather than in a separate appellate hierarchy, and that Tax Recovery Officers and Inspectors are authorities in their own right even though their functions are narrow.
Where you meet this section
A taxpayer never deals with this section directly; it is what gives the designation printed on the letterhead of every notice, order and approval its statutory footing, and it is cited when a challenge turns on whether the officer who acted, or the officer who approved, held a rank the Act recognises.
The words themselves
For the purposes of this Act, there shall be the following classes of income-tax authorities
Section 236, Income-tax Act, 2025.
the Central Board of Direct Taxes constituted under the Central Boards of Revenue Act, 1963 (54 of 1963)
Section 236(a), Income-tax Act, 2025.
What people get wrong
Reading the section as a source of power. It creates classes of authority only; jurisdiction and powers come from other provisions.
Treating Commissioner (Appeals) as outside the income-tax authorities. Clause (e) places that office inside the same list, as do clauses (f) and (g) for Additional and Joint Commissioners (Appeals).
Overlooking that Directorate and Commissionerate designations are paired at each level. Clauses (b) to (i) list a Director-side and a Commissioner-side designation as alternatives of the same class.
Assuming a Tax Recovery Officer or an Inspector is not an income-tax authority. Clauses (k) and (l) list both.
What this replaced
The correspondence is the Income Tax Department’s own, from its comparison utility for the 1961 and 2025 Acts. A renumbering is the easy half; whether the words changed is the half that decides cases.
A circular binds the department, not you and not a court. Every one below was written under the 1961 Act; it reaches this section because the department’s own concordance carries the provision it names to this one.
A notification is made under a power the Act gives and, within that power, is law. These too were made under the 1961 Act and are placed here by the department’s concordance.
Notification: 72 Date of Issue: 18/9/2013 — Section 120(1) and (2) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 -income-tax Authorities - Jurisdiction of - Notified Assessing Officer for Purp 2013-09-18
Read this before you rely on it. Every decision below was decided under the Income-tax Act, 1961. It appears here because it is tagged to a 1961 provision that the department’s own mapping carries to section 236. That is an inference we have drawn, not a holding on the new section: where the words changed in the move, the reasoning may not survive. Treat this as the place to start looking, not as authority on the 2025 Act.
What this page does not tell you. It does not reproduce the section. Everything above was written from the section’s own text as the Income Tax Department publishes it — the text is here, and nothing here is advice on your facts. Where a figure matters, read the sub-section it comes from.