Section 240 — Taxpayer's Charter. Successor to s.119A of the 1961 Act.
Section 240 is in Chapter XIV — Tax Administration, which runs from section 236 to section 261.
A single sentence requiring the Board to adopt and declare a Taxpayer's Charter, and empowering it to issue orders, instructions, directions or guidelines to other income-tax authorities as it thinks fit for administering that Charter. The section neither sets out the contents of the Charter nor attaches any consequence to a departure from it.
It puts the Board under a statutory obligation to publish a Charter of taxpayer rights and expectations and gives it the administrative machinery to make the rest of the department work to it.
This is a machinery provision addressed to the Board and the authorities below it; it gives a taxpayer no right, remedy or time limit of its own. What matters practically is the Charter the Board declares under it, together with any instructions issued for its administration.
Nowhere directly — the section creates no right, remedy or time limit and attaches no consequence to a departure from the Charter. It is addressed to the Board, which must adopt and declare the Charter, and to the income-tax authorities below it; what a taxpayer actually encounters is the declared Taxpayer's Charter itself and any orders, instructions, directions or guidelines the Board issues for administering it.
The Board shall adopt and declare a Taxpayer's Charter and issue such orders, instructions, directions or guidelines to other income-tax authorities as it considers fit for the administration of such Charter.
See the full 1961 to 2025 concordance.