Section 55 — Insurance business. Successor to s.44 of the 1961 Act.
Section 55 is in Chapter IV — Computation of Total Income, which runs from section 13 to section 95.
A single sentence with a non obstante clause: the profits and gains of any insurance business — including one carried on by a mutual insurance company or by a co-operative society — are computed as provided in Schedule XIV, overriding the computation provisions for 'Income from house property', 'Capital gains' and 'Income from other sources', section 390(5) and (6), and sections 26 to 54. Nothing about how the computation is done appears in the section itself.
Insurance accounts are drawn under their own regulatory framework, so the Act removes insurers from the ordinary heads-of-income machinery and puts the whole computation into one Schedule.
There is nothing to compute from this section — go straight to Schedule XIV, which carries the entire method. The practical consequence of the override is that the normal business-computation sections 26 to 54, the house property, capital gains and other sources provisions, and section 390(5) and (6) do not apply to the insurance business to the extent the Schedule provides.
An insurer lets part of an office block it owns and also realises a gain on securities it holds. On ordinary principles the rent would be computed under 'Income from house property', the gain under 'Capital gains', and the business result under sections 26 to 54. Section 55 displaces all of that at once: its opening words override those heads, section 390(5) and (6) and sections 26 to 54, and the profits and gains of the insurance business are computed as per Schedule XIV instead — and the same is true of a mutual insurance company and of a co-operative society carrying on insurance, both named in the section. Nothing in the section produces a figure; every number comes out of the Schedule.
In an insurer's return and its computation of business income, which is drawn under Schedule XIV rather than the ordinary heads, and in the assessment order testing that computation. The section names no form and no authority — it names only Schedule XIV.
the profits and gains of any business of insurance, including any such business carried on by a mutual insurance company or by a co-operative society, shall be computed as per the provisions of Schedule XIV
See the full 1961 to 2025 concordance.
See the notifications index.