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Case law › Income-tax Act 2025 › Chapter XXIII › Section 501
Chapter XXIIIwas s.282

Section 501 of the Income-tax Act, 2025

Section 501 — Service of notice, generally. Successor to s.282 of the 1961 Act.

Where this section sits

Section 501 is in Chapter XXIII — Miscellaneous, which runs from section 499 to section 536.

← Section 500  ·  Section 502 →

What this section does

Sub-section (1) sets out how any notice, summon, requisition, order or other communication under the Act may be served on the person named: by post or by a courier service approved by the Board, in the manner provided by the Code of Civil Procedure, 1908 for service of summons, in the form of an electronic record under Chapter IV of the Information Technology Act, 2000, or by any other prescribed means of transmission. Sub-section (2) lets the Board make rules on the addresses, including electronic mail addresses, to which such communications may be delivered or transmitted. Sub-section (3) defines 'electronic mail' and 'electronic mail message' as a message or information created, transmitted or received on a computer, computer system, computer resource or communication device, including attachments in text, image, audio, video or any other electronic record.

Why it is there

It gives the department a menu of equally valid service methods, expressly including electronic ones, so that service is not defeated by the mode chosen. Leaving the addresses to Board rules allows the electronic address of record to be fixed administratively.

Who it applies to

What this means in practice

An objection to service has to engage with the specific mode used, because all four routes in sub-section (1) are alternatives — service by an electronic record under the Information Technology Act is as good as service by post. The address to which it goes matters more than the method: that is governed by rules made under sub-section (2), so a communication sent to the address of record can be valid even if it never comes to your attention. Courier service counts only where the courier is approved by the Board.

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 income-tax authority transmits a notice as an electronic record under Chapter IV of the Information Technology Act, 2000 to the assessee's email address of record, and the assessee never opens it. Service is nonetheless made: clause (c) is one of four alternative modes in sub-section (1), as good as post, and the address it went to is governed by rules made under sub-section (2) rather than by whether the communication came to his attention. Change the facts slightly and the answer changes — a copy handed over by a courier service that the Board has not approved does not satisfy clause (a) at all. An objection to service therefore has to engage with the particular mode used and the address rules, not with receipt in fact.

Where you meet this section

Whenever a taxpayer disputes how a notice, summons, requisition, order or other communication under the Act reached him — the point arises in a reply to that communication and in any appeal challenging proceedings founded on it. The section names no form; it names the modes, and leaves the addresses, including the electronic mail address, to rules made by the Board.

The words themselves

The service of a notice, or summon, or requisition, or order, or any other communication, under this Act (herein referred to as communication) may be made by delivering or transmitting a copy thereof, to the person therein named
s.501(1), Income-tax Act, 2025.

What people get wrong

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.

See the full 1961 to 2025 concordance.

Rules that serve this section

Rules of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 that work section 501. Where the rule’s own heading names the section we say so; the rest are marked on reading the rule, which is our derivation and not the department’s. A rule that serves the section silently and that we have missed will not appear here.

All of them are in the Rules 2026 index.

Notifications that reach this section

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.

See the notifications index.

Case law carried across

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 501. 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.

Explainers

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.