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Case lawSupreme Court › ITC Ltd v CIT (TDS)
Supreme CourtHelps taxpayers.192s.192(3)s.15s.17s.17(3)(ii)s.201s.201(1)s.201(1A)s.56(1)s.271Cs.392 (Act of 2025)s.398 (Act of 2025)

ITC Ltd v CIT (TDS)

Our restaurant and banquet bills carry a tip that the customer adds on the card. The money lands in our bank account and we hand it to the staff with their wages. The department says that is salary we should have deducted on. Is it?

The Income-tax Act, 1961 was repealed on 1 April 2026. It still governs income earned up to 31 March 2026, and every proceeding about those years however late — assessment, reassessment, rectification, penalty, revision and appeal alike. Income earned from 1 April 2026 is governed by the Income-tax Act, 2025. What changed, and which Act governs your year →

Our restaurant and banquet bills carry a tip that the customer adds on the card. The money lands in our bank account and we hand it to the staff with their wages. The department says that is salary we should have deducted on. Is it?

No. The Supreme Court held that a tip is not salary at all, and that the route it travels — cash into the waiter's hand or a card entry through the employer's bank account — makes no difference. Section 15(b) taxes what is paid or allowed by or on behalf of an employer, and the word employer presupposes a contract of employment; the employee has no vested right to claim a tip from his employer, and the amount has no reference to his contract of employment. The employer receives the money in a fiduciary capacity as trustee and is only a conduit between customer and staff. The tip is the employee's income from other sources under section 56(1). Section 192 is therefore not attracted, the employer is not an assessee in default, and no interest under section 201(1A) arises.

Decided by the Supreme Court (Supreme Court of India - Kurian Joseph and R.F. Nariman, JJ., Civil Appeals Nos. 4435-4444 of 2016) on 2016-04-26, reported as AIR 2016 SC 2127; Civil Appeals Nos. 4435-4444 of 2016. It bears on section 192, section 192(3), section 15, section 17, section 17(3)(ii), section 201, section 201(1), section 201(1A), section 56(1), section 271C, section 392 (Act of 2025), section 398 (Act of 2025) of the Income Tax Act 1961, in TDS Defaults and Salary & Perquisites matters.

Still good law. Nothing later was found that overrules, doubts or narrows this decision, and no citator service was consulted. Three limits on how far the holding travels are worth fixing before relying on it. The first is that it turns on the absence of a vested right. The Court's words are that there is no vested right in the employee to claim any amount of tip from his employer, and that the payment has no reference to the contract of employment. Where the terms of employment or a settlement give staff an enforceable share of a pooled amount, the foundation of the holding is gone and the amount can be salary. The second is the test the Court finally applied. Taking the proximity test from Hochstrasser v Mayes, it held that the contract of employment was not the proximate cause for the receipt of tips by the employee from a customer, so the amounts fell outside sections 15 and 17. An arrangement in which the employment is the proximate cause, and not merely the reason the employee was in a position to be tipped, is a different case. The third is that a service charge levied by the establishment on its own account was not decided. What the Court approved, from Rambagh Palace Hotel, is that the true character of tips is not a payment made by the management but a transfer of what is collected from the customer and paid to the staff; that passage speaks of customers paying tips to the management in the shape of service charges, so the line has to be drawn on whose receipt the money is rather than on what the bill calls it. One question was left open in terms: the Court said it was unnecessary to go into the nature of interest under section 201(1A), deciding the point instead on Eli Lilly, that interest can only be levied where a person is declared an assessee in default. On the years this still governs. The Income-tax Act, 1961 was repealed on 1 April 2026 by section 536(1) of the Income-tax Act, 2025, and section 536(2)(c) continues it for proceedings pending, and proceedings initiated on or after that date, in respect of any tax year beginning before 1 April 2026. Survey-based deduction proceedings for those years are live and this judgment decides them. For a credit or payment on or after 1 April 2026 the deduction provision for salary is section 392 of the 2025 Act and section 398 takes the place of section 201.

Why it matters

Every hotel, restaurant and banqueting business in the country pools a tip and pays it out with the wages, and a TDS survey finds it in an afternoon. Before this judgment the argument ran on the plumbing — cash in the hand was safe, the card entry was not, because the money had touched the employer's bank account. The Supreme Court moved the question off the plumbing altogether. What matters is whether the employee can claim the amount from the employer as of right under his contract of employment. If he cannot, the employer is a trustee handing over somebody else's money, and section 192 never engages, so there is no default and no interest. That reasoning is not confined to hotels: it reaches any pass-through where an outsider's money is routed to staff through the payroll, and it is the reason the department's habit of treating everything that leaves the employer's account as salary does not hold.

Binding on every court and authority in India.

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Related

Other authorities on the same sections.
Every authority on the provisions this decision turns on: all 52 on s.201(1A) · all 47 on s.201(1) · all 45 on s.201