I pay rent to my wife, who owns the flat. Will my HRA exemption survive?
The reported outcome is that the exemption was allowed for AY 2020-21, the flat being registered in the wife's name, she servicing the loan on it and having declared the rent in her own return. That account comes from a digest listing. The order is unreported and could not be found in a full-text subscription research database on any of three searches, so no paragraph of it has been read and nothing in this entry is corroborated by a primary source. For a sourced authority on the same point, lead with Abhay Kumar Mittal v. Dy. CIT [2022] 136 taxmann.com 78/194 ITD 224 (Delhi)(Trib.).
Decided by the ITAT (ITAT Delhi) on 2023-06-30, reported as ITA No. 267/Del/2023, dated 30.06.2023 (Delhi)(Trib.)(UR). It bears on section 10(13A) of the Income Tax Act 1961, in Salary & Perquisites matters.
Rent paid to a spouse is a common disallowance in salaried assessments, and the objection is usually put as a legal bar rather than as a question of fact. The reported outcome here is against that objection, but it cannot be relied on for reasoning: no paragraph of the order has been read and the route previously set out in this entry was not taken from the order. The point that can be sourced comes from Abhay Kumar Mittal v. Dy. CIT [2022] 136 taxmann.com 78/194 ITD 224 (Delhi)(Trib.), which has been read in full. There the Delhi Bench held there is no bar on a husband advancing a loan to his wife out of his known sources and none on her repaying it out of her own mutual funds and fixed deposits, that the house stood registered in her name, that she had declared the rent under the head income from house property in returns the revenue had accepted, that the source of the purchase money in her hands was proved and never doubted, and that the first appellate authority's proposition that a husband cannot pay rent to his wife 'is devoid of any legal implication supporting any such contention' (para 8). Those facts were specific: the husband had himself funded Rs. 87.50 lakh of the Rs. 1.15 crore purchase price, and the point turned on the wife having repaid that out of her own funds. The real battleground in these cases is clubbing and deemed ownership rather than the conditions of the exemption itself.
Binding on the AO and CIT(A) within the Tribunal's jurisdiction. Persuasive elsewhere.
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For AY 2020-21 the assessee, a salaried employee, claimed exemption for house rent allowance in respect of rent paid to his wife. The property was registered in the wife's name and she was servicing the loan on it. The wife had filed her own return of income in which she declared the rental income received from her husband along with income from business and profession and income from other sources. The Assessing Officer disallowed the HRA exemption on the footing that a payment of rent to one's own spouse could not support a claim under s.10(13A).
As reported: the appeal was allowed and the exemption permitted in respect of rent paid to the assessee's wife. The order is unreported and is not carried in a full-text subscription research database, so the holding rests on a digest listing alone and no paragraph of the order has been read. Whether the Tribunal decided the point or restored anything to the Assessing Officer cannot be established.
No paragraph of the order has been read, and there is no sourced account of the Tribunal's route. The digest listing records that the wife's return showed rental income alongside income from business and profession and income from other sources, that the flat was registered in her name and that she was servicing the loan on it. What was previously set out here as the Tribunal's reasoning - that it treated the question as one of genuineness rather than of any legal bar, that the wife was the real owner and the proper recipient of rent, that the revenue could not accept her return and simultaneously deny the payment in the husband's hands, and that the condition in s.10(13A) was satisfied - cannot be traced to any paragraph of any order and has been removed.
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Handle my notice → Ask a CA on WhatsAppThe reported outcome is that the exemption was allowed for AY 2020-21, the flat being registered in the wife's name, she servicing the loan on it and having declared the rent in her own return. That account comes from a digest listing. The order is unreported and could not be found in a full-text subscription research database on any of three searches, so no paragraph of it has been read and nothing in this entry is corroborated by a primary source. For a sourced authority on the same point, lead with Abhay Kumar Mittal v. Dy. CIT [2022] 136 taxmann.com 78/194 ITD 224 (Delhi)(Trib.). This was decided by the ITAT (ITAT Delhi) and bears on section 10(13A) of the Income Tax Act 1961. It is reported as ITA No. 267/Del/2023, dated 30.06.2023 (Delhi)(Trib.)(UR). Rent paid to a spouse is a common disallowance in salaried assessments, and the objection is usually put as a legal bar rather than as a question of fact. The reported outcome here is against that objection, but it cannot be relied on for reasoning: no paragraph of the order has been read and the route previously set out in this entry was not taken from the order. The point that can be sourced comes from Abhay Kumar Mittal v. Dy. CIT [2022] 136 taxmann.com 78/194 ITD 224 (Delhi)(Trib.), which has been read in full. There the Delhi Bench held there is no bar on a husband advancing a loan to his wife out of his known sources and none on her repaying it out of her own mutual funds and fixed deposits, that the house stood registered in her name, that she had declared the rent under the head income from house property in returns the revenue had accepted, that the source of the purchase money in her hands was proved and never doubted, and that the first appellate authority's proposition that a husband cannot pay rent to his wife 'is devoid of any legal implication supporting any such contention' (para 8). Those facts were specific: the husband had himself funded Rs. 87.50 lakh of the Rs. 1.15 crore purchase price, and the point turned on the wife having repaid that out of her own funds. The real battleground in these cases is clubbing and deemed ownership rather than the conditions of the exemption itself. If it applies to you, the first step is this: Lead with Abhay Kumar Mittal v. Dy. CIT [2022] 136 taxmann.com 78/194 ITD 224 (Delhi)(Trib.), which is reported and has been read in full, and use this order, if at all, as a cross-reference.
For AY 2020-21 the assessee, a salaried employee, claimed exemption for house rent allowance in respect of rent paid to his wife. The property was registered in the wife's name and she was servicing the loan on it. The wife had filed her own return of income in which she declared the rental income received from her husband along with income from business and profession and income from other sources. The Assessing Officer disallowed the HRA exemption on the footing that a payment of rent to one's own spouse could not support a claim under s.10(13A). The matter was decided on 2023-06-30 by the ITAT (ITAT Delhi). On those facts the ITAT held as follows. As reported: the appeal was allowed and the exemption permitted in respect of rent paid to the assessee's wife. The order is unreported and is not carried in a full-text subscription research database, so the holding rests on a digest listing alone and no paragraph of the order has been read. Whether the Tribunal decided the point or restored anything to the Assessing Officer cannot be established.
No paragraph of the order has been read, and there is no sourced account of the Tribunal's route. The digest listing records that the wife's return showed rental income alongside income from business and profession and income from other sources, that the flat was registered in her name and that she was servicing the loan on it. What was previously set out here as the Tribunal's reasoning - that it treated the question as one of genuineness rather than of any legal bar, that the wife was the real owner and the proper recipient of rent, that the revenue could not accept her return and simultaneously deny the payment in the husband's hands, and that the condition in s.10(13A) was satisfied - cannot be traced to any paragraph of any order and has been removed.
It was decided by the ITAT on 2023-06-30 and is reported as ITA No. 267/Del/2023, dated 30.06.2023 (Delhi)(Trib.)(UR). Binding on the AO and CIT(A) within the Tribunal's jurisdiction. Persuasive elsewhere. A Tribunal decision binds the assessing officer and the Commissioner (Appeals) within that Tribunal's jurisdiction, and is persuasive before other benches. It is not binding on a High Court, and a contrary co-ordinate bench decision will be argued against you, so check whether the point has been taken the other way before you build a reply around it. On section 10(13A), the practical question is whether the facts of your own notice match the facts of this case closely enough for the same rule to apply.
It helps the taxpayer. As reported: the appeal was allowed and the exemption permitted in respect of rent paid to the assessee's wife. The order is unreported and is not carried in a full-text subscription research database, so the holding rests on a digest listing alone and no paragraph of the order has been read. Whether the Tribunal decided the point or restored anything to the Assessing Officer cannot be established. It arises in Salary & Perquisites matters, on section 10(13A) of the Income Tax Act 1961, and was decided by ITAT Delhi. Before relying on it, read the source linked on this page and check whether it has since been distinguished, overruled or overtaken by an amendment to the Income Tax Act. In practice the steps that follow from it are these. Assemble the wife's filed return showing the rental income, the registered title deed and the record of who serviced the loan before the claim is questioned. Where the husband funded the purchase, be ready to show how the wife repaid him out of her own funds - that was the fact the Delhi Bench turned on in Abhay Kumar Mittal. Expect the real attack to come under the clubbing provision in s.64 and the deemed ownership provision in s.27 rather than on the conditions of s.10(13A) itself. Check the client's regime first: this is an old-regime exemption and is not available under the default regime in s.115BAC.
The judgment itself could not be reached, so no check was possible. Unverified, and now for a stronger reason than before. The order is not merely uncited: it could not be found in a full-text subscription research database at all. Three searches were run - the party name, which returns a large number of unrelated records; the appeal number 267/Del/2023, which returns none; and the party name narrowed by 'house rent allowance', which returns nothing on point. The absence across all three is consistent with the digest's own '(UR)' marking, but it also means no primary text of the order has ever been read for this entry, so its holding must not be restated as though it were sourced. A taxguru survey does cite the order by its appeal number and sets it alongside Bajrang Prasad Ramdharani v. Asstt. CIT (ITA 715/Ahd/2013), Abhay Kumar Mittal v. Dy. CIT (ITA 3385/Del/2019) and Meena Vaswani v. Asstt. CIT (ITA 1983/Mum/2015), the last of which refused the exemption on cash rent paid to a mother; an author citing an order in a survey is not a court applying it. Abhay Kumar Mittal has now been read in full and its particulars are confirmed - [2022] 136 taxmann.com 78/194 ITD 224 (Delhi)(Trib.), ITA No. 3385/Del/2019, AY 2013-14, decided 8 February 2022, A.D. Jain (Vice President) and Dr. B.R.R. Kumar (Accountant Member), the assessee's appeal allowed. That decision is itself unverified: it carries no later treatment and cites no authority at all. That finding was checked against a published source, which is linked on this page, on 2026-08-25. Checking whether an authority still stands matters as much as knowing what it held: a decision may be overruled on one point and survive on another, or the provision it interprets may have been amended since. Read the source and the editor's note on this page before relying on it in a reply to an Assessing Officer or in an appeal.
The judgment could not be found in a full-text subscription research database. Three searches were run: the party name, which returns a large number of unrelated records from other jurisdictions; the appeal number ITA No. 267/Del/2023, which returns none; and the party name narrowed by 'house rent allowance', which returns nothing on point. That corroborates the digest's '(UR)' marking, but it also means the appeal number, the date of 30 June 2023, the bench, the assessment year and every fact in this entry are uncorroborated by any primary source, and the citation itself is unconfirmed. The sentence previously quoted here was truncated mid-clause on the source page and is not language of any judgment paragraph; it has been removed rather than repaired, and the entry now carries no quotation. This entry sits at Tribunal tier, but its sourcing supports only a digest listing and it should not be cited as a reasoned holding. Prefer Abhay Kumar Mittal v. Dy. CIT [2022] 136 taxmann.com 78/194 ITD 224 (Delhi)(Trib.), which has been read in full: ITA No. 3385/Del/2019, AY 2013-14, decided 8 February 2022, A.D. Jain (Vice President) and Dr. B.R.R. Kumar (Accountant Member), assessee's appeal allowed. Two cautions if that decision is used. It cites no authority at all and has no case review, so para 8 rests entirely on its facts and on the absence of any statutory bar; and its facts are unusually favourable and unusually specific, the husband having funded Rs. 87.50 lakh of the Rs. 1.15 crore purchase price and the point turning on his wife having repaid that out of her own mutual funds and fixed deposits. The order also names the wife inconsistently, as Smt. Shivani Mittal at paras 3 to 5 and Smt. Shivani Bansal at para 8. The order is unreported and could not be found in a full-text subscription research database, so no reporter citation, no bench and no paragraph of it is available and the reasoning cannot be sourced at all. It is not known whether the Tribunal decided the point or restored it to the Assessing Officer. Nothing here has been tested against a primary source. This library shows the verification state of every entry openly. This entry has not yet been read in full by a chartered accountant. The summary reflects the sources listed on this page. Read the source before you rely on it in a reply to an Assessing Officer or in an appeal before the Commissioner (Appeals) or the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal.
As reported: the appeal was allowed and the exemption permitted in respect of rent paid to the assessee's wife. The order is unreported and is not carried in a full-text subscription research database, so the holding rests on a digest listing alone and no paragraph of the order has been read. Whether the Tribunal decided the point or restored anything to the Assessing Officer cannot be established.
TaxSphere, “Aman Kumar Jain v ITO”, https://taxnotice.vittsphere.com/caselaw/case/aman-kumar-jain-v-ito-hra-rent-paid-to-wife/ (validity last checked 2026-08-25)
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I pay rent to my wife for the flat she owns and we live in it together. The officer says the whole thing is a colourable device and has disallowed my HRA. Is living under the same roof as my landlord by itself fatal?
What evidence does the department actually need before it will accept HRA on rent paid to my mother?
