The section makes the Principal Director General, Director General, Principal Director and Director; the Principal Chief Commissioner, Chief Commissioner, Principal Commissioner and Commissioner; and the Joint Commissioner each competent to make any enquiry under the Act, and gives each of them, for that purpose, all the powers that an Assessing Officer has under the Act in relation to the making of enquiries.
Why it is there
Enquiry work does not always sit with the officer holding the file, and without this section a senior authority examining a case would have to route every question through the Assessing Officer. The section attaches the enquiry power to the office, while limiting the borrowed powers to those relating to the making of enquiries.
Who it applies to
The Principal Director General, Director General, Principal Director and Director
The Principal Chief Commissioner, Chief Commissioner, Principal Commissioner and Commissioner
The Joint Commissioner
Any person from whom such an authority seeks information in an enquiry
What this means in practice
Competence to enquire does not depend on the case having been transferred or on the authority being the assessee's Assessing Officer. What is borrowed is limited to the powers an Assessing Officer has in relation to the making of enquiries, so the section does not by itself authorise an assessment or any other order. The list of authorities is closed; an officer outside it must find his power elsewhere in the Act.
An example
Illustrative only, and invented for this page. The figures are chosen to show the rule biting, not taken from any real matter.
An enquiry into a taxpayer's affairs is taken up by a Director rather than by the Assessing Officer holding the file. Section 256 supplies the authority: the Director may make the enquiry and has, for that purpose, the same powers in relation to enquiries the Assessing Officer would have had. Nothing in the section lets him complete the assessment.
Where you meet this section
In a letter or requisition issued in an enquiry by an officer who is not your Assessing Officer — a Director, a Principal Commissioner or a Joint Commissioner. This is the source of his competence to ask.
The words themselves
shall have all the powers that an Assessing Officer has under this Act in relation to the making of enquiries
Section 256, Income-tax Act, 2025.
What people get wrong
Declining to answer an authority who is not the Assessing Officer. The named authorities are competent to make any enquiry under the Act.
Reading the section as conferring assessment powers. It confers only the enquiry powers of an Assessing Officer.
Assuming every income-tax authority is covered. The section names a closed list.
Requiring a transfer of jurisdiction first. The competence attaches to the office, not to the pendency of the case before that authority.
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.
135 - Power of Principal Director General or Director General or Principal Director or Director, Principal Chief Commissioner or Chief Commissioner or Principal Commissioner or Commissioner and Joint Commissioner
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.
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 256. 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.
Pooran Mal v Director of InspectionSupreme CourtHelps departmenttagged s.135 The search on me was illegal. Can I stop the department using what it took?
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.