Section 312 — Executor. Successor to s.168, s.169 of the 1961 Act.
Section 312 is in Chapter XVII — Special Provisions Relating to Certain Persons, which runs from section 302 to section 355.
Sub-section (1) charges the income of the estate of a deceased person in the hands of the executor — as an individual if there is only one executor, and as an association of persons if there are more than one. Sub-section (2) settles residence: the executor is deemed to be resident or non-resident according to the residential status of the deceased for the tax year in which his death took place. Sub-section (3) defines "executor" to include an administrator or other person administering the estate of a deceased person.
Sub-section (4) keeps the two capacities apart: the assessment of an executor under this section is made separately from any assessment made on him in respect of his own income. Sub-section (5) requires separate assessments on the total income of each completed tax year, or part of one, falling in the period from the date of death to the date of complete distribution to the beneficiaries according to their several interests.
Sub-section (6) removes from the estate's income of a tax year any income of that year distributed to, or applied to the benefit of, a specific legatee during that year, and includes the excluded income in the total income of that specific legatee for that tax year. Sub-section (7) applies section 305, so far as may be, to an executor in respect of tax paid or payable by him, as it applies to a representative assessee.
Between death and distribution the estate earns income that belongs to nobody definitively: the deceased can no longer be assessed and the beneficiaries have not yet received their shares. The section makes the executor the assessable person for that interval, fixes the character in which he is assessed by the number of executors, and closes the interval at complete distribution. Sub-section (6) prevents the same income being taxed twice by moving to the specific legatee whatever actually reached him in the year.
The number of executors changes the status in which the estate is assessed — one executor means an individual, more than one means an association of persons — and status carries consequences elsewhere in the Act. Residence is not the executor's own: sub-section (2) fixes it by the deceased's residential status for the tax year of death, and it stays fixed for the whole period of administration, so an executor resident in India can be assessed as a non-resident on the estate, or the reverse. Sub-section (4) means the executor never merges the estate's income with his own; two assessments run in parallel. The estate's period is measured in tax years and parts of them under sub-section (5), from the date of death to complete distribution — not to the date of the will's probate or of any partial distribution. Sub-section (6) is limited to a specific legatee and to income distributed or applied in the same tax year: income accumulated in the estate stays with the executor.
An individual dies in June, leaving an estate that earns rent of Rs 30 lakh in the tax year of death, and two executors are appointed. The estate is assessed as an association of persons under sub-section (1), and as resident or non-resident according to the deceased's residential status for that tax year under sub-section (2). If Rs 8 lakh of that year's income is distributed to a specific legatee during the same year, sub-section (6) takes it out of the estate's total income and puts it into that legatee's total income for the year; the remaining Rs 22 lakh is assessed on the executors. The executors continue to be assessed year by year, and for the part year up to complete distribution, under sub-section (5), separately from their own returns.
In a return filed by an executor for the estate of a deceased person, distinct from his own return, and in the assessments made for each year of the administration. A specific legatee meets it as the reason estate income appears in his own total income under sub-section (6).
chargeable to tax in the hands of the executor as an individual, if there is only one executor, or as an association of persons, if the executors are more than one
the executor shall be deemed to be resident or non-resident according to the residential status of the deceased person for the tax year in which his death took place
the income so excluded, shall be included in the total income of the tax year of such specific legatee
See the full 1961 to 2025 concordance.