My collaboration agreement pays the foreign company a running royalty on turnover. The Department wants to treat a quarter of it as capital. Can a single royalty be split at all?
It can. The Supreme Court upheld a finding that a quarter of the royalty was capital, on facts where the foreign firm had not merely supplied technical know-how but had furnished plans and designs and rendered valuable services in setting up the factory itself, the business was new, and after the agreement expired there was no bar on the assessee continuing to make the product. The Court held it difficult to treat the whole payment as revenue merely because it was calculated as a percentage of gross turnover. How the money is paid does not settle what it was paid for.
Decided by the Supreme Court (Supreme Court of India - S.C. Agrawal and G.B. Pattanaik JJ) on 1997-02-11, reported as [1997] 224 ITR 342 (SC); appeals by special leave from the judgment of the Madras High Court reported at [1979] 117 ITR 55. It bears on section 37(1), section 256(1), section 34 (Act of 2025) of the Income Tax Act 1961, in Deductions & Disallowances and How Tax Law Is Read matters.
Apportionment is the outcome a practitioner meets most often in a collaboration or technology dispute, and it is the outcome least well supported by the cases usually cited. Alembic gives the taxpayer a full allowance and Bharti Hexacom gives the Department a wholly capital character; this is the decision that says a single composite payment can be part one and part the other, and it is the Supreme Court. Two things in it do work on the ground. The first is the list of factors, which is effectively a checklist to run against the agreement: new plant and process or improvement to an existing product, new business or existing business, what has to be returned when the contract ends and what may be kept, the cumulative effect of the terms, and whether anything was added to capital. An officer who has not gone through that list has not done the analysis the Supreme Court prescribed. The second is the refusal to let the mode of payment decide the question. A running royalty on turnover is the ordinary form of these agreements and it is the form most often relied on to argue that the whole payment must be revenue; this judgment holds that argument insufficient on its own. The case is therefore as useful for resisting an all-or-nothing position as for supporting one.
Binding on every court and authority in India.
Read aloud by your device. Press again to stop.
The assessee, a limited company incorporated in March 1963 to manufacture automobile springs, entered into an agreement with Jonas Woodhead and Sons Ltd. of the United Kingdom for the manufacture of all types of springs and suspension for road and rail vehicles. Under the agreement the foreign firm was to give the assessee the technical information and know-how relating to the setting up of a plant suitable for the manufacture of the products as well as the technical know-how relating to the setting up of the plant itself, together with the drawings, estimates, specifications, manufacturing methods, blueprints of production and testing equipment and other data and information necessary to manufacture the products and to set up proper and efficient plants. In consideration of the information furnished and the services rendered, the assessee was to pay a royalty at stated rates on the turnover of the licensed products, calculated in accordance with the agreement. Production commenced on 1 January 1966. For assessment years 1967-68 and 1968-69 the assessee paid Rs.24,000 and Rs.47,000 respectively as royalty. The Income-tax Officer disallowed a quarter of each payment, on the ground that it represented the consideration for services provided by the foreign company of an enduring nature. The Appellate Assistant Commissioner and the Tribunal both upheld him. On a reference under section 256(1) the Madras High Court answered against the assessee, holding that the assessee had acquired a benefit of enduring nature amounting to the acquisition of an asset, and that the payment was not remuneration for the use of rights granted but a composite payment for all the services rendered and information furnished both in setting up the factory and in manufacturing the licensed products in it.
The appeals were dismissed, without any order as to costs. The Court began by listing the factors on which the character of a payment under a collaboration agreement depends: whether the assessee obtained a completely new plant with a completely new process and completely new technology for manufacture of the product, or the payment was made for technical know-how for the betterment of a product already being produced; whether the improvisation is part and parcel of the existing business or a new business was set up with the technical know-how paid for; whether on expiry of the agreement the assessee has to give back the plans and designs while remaining able to manufacture in the factory set up with the foreign firm's collaboration; the cumulative effect of the various terms and conditions of the agreement; and whether the assessee derived benefits accruing to its capital for which the payment was made. It then set out the reasoning in Alembic Chemical Works Co. Ltd. v Commissioner of Income Tax and adopted it, in particular that in the infinite variety of situational diversities no general rule can be formulated, that there is no single definitive criterion which by itself is demarcative, and that the once-for-all test and the test of enduring benefit may not be conclusive. Reviewing CIBA of India, Lucas-T.V.S., Sarada Binding Works, Agarwal Hardware Works, Tata Engineering and Locomotive and Empire Jute, the Court observed that the tests applied have varied and that the ultimate question is whether the expenditure makes an accretion to the capital asset, in which case it is capital. On the facts, the Tribunal having considered the different clauses of the agreement and concluded that what was set up was a new business, that the foreign firm had not only furnished information and technical know-how but rendered valuable services in setting up the factory itself, and that after the expiry of the agreement there was no embargo on the assessee continuing to manufacture the product, the Court held it difficult to hold that the entire payment was revenue expenditure merely because it was required to be made as a percentage of gross turnover. The High Court was fully justified in answering the reference in favour of the Revenue.
The assessee's argument was Alembic's argument, and it was put in Alembic's words: the technical know-how enabled the business to be carried on more efficiently and more profitably while leaving fixed capital untouched, so the payment was revenue and no part of it could be capital. Empire Jute was relied on for the proposition that an advantage of enduring benefit may still be on revenue account. The Court accepted all of that as law and none of it as an answer. Its method was to refuse a single test and to substitute a list of questions, each of which is answered from the agreement rather than from doctrine. What did the collaborator deliver - know-how for a product already being made, or the plant and the process for a product not made before? Was the business existing or new? What survives the agreement? What is the cumulative effect of the terms? Did the money produce an accretion to capital? The survey of earlier decisions that follows is doing a particular job. In CIBA of India the assessee got access to technical knowledge for a limited period and no asset of an enduring nature; in Lucas-T.V.S. it could not manufacture on the know-how after the licence expired; in Agarwal Hardware the patents were not usable after termination. In each the payment was revenue, and in each the reason was the same: what was bought ran out. Sarada Binding Works is the counterpoint, where a fixed sum was capital and payments geared to future profits were not. The line the Court draws through them is that a payment for something that ends with the contract is revenue and a payment for something that outlives it may not be. Applied here, the agreement failed at exactly that point. The foreign firm designed and helped set up the factory, and the factory did not end with the contract. The assessee had to return the plans and designs, but nothing stopped it going on making springs in the plant the collaboration had built. Something had been added to the assessee's capital and had stayed there. The last step answers the argument from form. A royalty on turnover looks like a recurring revenue payment, and the assessee relied on that. The Court's answer is that the mode of payment does not decide the character of what was bought - the same composite consideration can be paid in instalments geared to sales and still be, in part, the price of a factory.
It is difficult to hold that the entire payment made is a revenue expenditure merely because the payment is required to be made on a certain percentage of the rates of the gross turnover of the products…
Upload it and we will read it, work out your deadline and draft the reply. A CA reviews before anything is filed.
Handle my notice → Ask a CA on WhatsAppIt can. The Supreme Court upheld a finding that a quarter of the royalty was capital, on facts where the foreign firm had not merely supplied technical know-how but had furnished plans and designs and rendered valuable services in setting up the factory itself, the business was new, and after the agreement expired there was no bar on the assessee continuing to make the product. The Court held it difficult to treat the whole payment as revenue merely because it was calculated as a percentage of gross turnover. How the money is paid does not settle what it was paid for. This was decided by the Supreme Court (Supreme Court of India - S.C. Agrawal and G.B. Pattanaik JJ) and bears on section 37(1), section 256(1), section 34 (Act of 2025) of the Income Tax Act 1961. It is reported as [1997] 224 ITR 342 (SC); appeals by special leave from the judgment of the Madras High Court reported at [1979] 117 ITR 55. Apportionment is the outcome a practitioner meets most often in a collaboration or technology dispute, and it is the outcome least well supported by the cases usually cited. Alembic gives the taxpayer a full allowance and Bharti Hexacom gives the Department a wholly capital character; this is the decision that says a single composite payment can be part one and part the other, and it is the Supreme Court. Two things in it do work on the ground. The first is the list of factors, which is effectively a checklist to run against the agreement: new plant and process or improvement to an existing product, new business or existing business, what has to be returned when the contract ends and what may be kept, the cumulative effect of the terms, and whether anything was added to capital. An officer who has not gone through that list has not done the analysis the Supreme Court prescribed. The second is the refusal to let the mode of payment decide the question. A running royalty on turnover is the ordinary form of these agreements and it is the form most often relied on to argue that the whole payment must be revenue; this judgment holds that argument insufficient on its own. The case is therefore as useful for resisting an all-or-nothing position as for supporting one. If it applies to you, the first step is this: Go through the agreement clause by clause and separate what was supplied for setting up from what was supplied for running. That separation is the whole of the case; the Court listed the factors and they are all drawn from the terms of the agreement.
The assessee, a limited company incorporated in March 1963 to manufacture automobile springs, entered into an agreement with Jonas Woodhead and Sons Ltd. of the United Kingdom for the manufacture of all types of springs and suspension for road and rail vehicles. Under the agreement the foreign firm was to give the assessee the technical information and know-how relating to the setting up of a plant suitable for the manufacture of the products as well as the technical know-how relating to the setting up of the plant itself, together with the drawings, estimates, specifications, manufacturing methods, blueprints of production and testing equipment and other data and information necessary to manufacture the products and to set up proper and efficient plants. In consideration of the information furnished and the services rendered, the assessee was to pay a royalty at stated rates on the turnover of the licensed products, calculated in accordance with the agreement. Production commenced on 1 January 1966. For assessment years 1967-68 and 1968-69 the assessee paid Rs.24,000 and Rs.47,000 respectively as royalty. The Income-tax Officer disallowed a quarter of each payment, on the ground that it represented the consideration for services provided by the foreign company of an enduring nature. The Appellate Assistant Commissioner and the Tribunal both upheld him. On a reference under section 256(1) the Madras High Court answered against the assessee, holding that the assessee had acquired a benefit of enduring nature amounting to the acquisition of an asset, and that the payment was not remuneration for the use of rights granted but a composite payment for all the services rendered and information furnished both in setting up the factory and in manufacturing the licensed products in it. The matter was decided on 1997-02-11 by the Supreme Court (Supreme Court of India - S.C. Agrawal and G.B. Pattanaik JJ). On those facts the Supreme Court held as follows. The appeals were dismissed, without any order as to costs. The Court began by listing the factors on which the character of a payment under a collaboration agreement depends: whether the assessee obtained a completely new plant with a completely new process and completely new technology for manufacture of the product, or the payment was made for technical know-how for the betterment of a product already being produced; whether the improvisation is part and parcel of the existing business or a new business was set up with the technical know-how paid for; whether on expiry of the agreement the assessee has to give back the plans and designs while remaining able to manufacture in the factory set up with the foreign firm's collaboration; the cumulative effect of the various terms and conditions of the agreement; and whether the assessee derived benefits accruing to its capital for which the payment was made. It then set out the reasoning in Alembic Chemical Works Co. Ltd. v Commissioner of Income Tax and adopted it, in particular that in the infinite variety of situational diversities no general rule can be formulated, that there is no single definitive criterion which by itself is demarcative, and that the once-for-all test and the test of enduring benefit may not be conclusive. Reviewing CIBA of India, Lucas-T.V.S., Sarada Binding Works, Agarwal Hardware Works, Tata Engineering and Locomotive and Empire Jute, the Court observed that the tests applied have varied and that the ultimate question is whether the expenditure makes an accretion to the capital asset, in which case it is capital. On the facts, the Tribunal having considered the different clauses of the agreement and concluded that what was set up was a new business, that the foreign firm had not only furnished information and technical know-how but rendered valuable services in setting up the factory itself, and that after the expiry of the agreement there was no embargo on the assessee continuing to manufacture the product, the Court held it difficult to hold that the entire payment was revenue expenditure merely because it was required to be made as a percentage of gross turnover. The High Court was fully justified in answering the reference in favour of the Revenue.
The assessee's argument was Alembic's argument, and it was put in Alembic's words: the technical know-how enabled the business to be carried on more efficiently and more profitably while leaving fixed capital untouched, so the payment was revenue and no part of it could be capital. Empire Jute was relied on for the proposition that an advantage of enduring benefit may still be on revenue account. The Court accepted all of that as law and none of it as an answer. Its method was to refuse a single test and to substitute a list of questions, each of which is answered from the agreement rather than from doctrine. What did the collaborator deliver - know-how for a product already being made, or the plant and the process for a product not made before? Was the business existing or new? What survives the agreement? What is the cumulative effect of the terms? Did the money produce an accretion to capital? The survey of earlier decisions that follows is doing a particular job. In CIBA of India the assessee got access to technical knowledge for a limited period and no asset of an enduring nature; in Lucas-T.V.S. it could not manufacture on the know-how after the licence expired; in Agarwal Hardware the patents were not usable after termination. In each the payment was revenue, and in each the reason was the same: what was bought ran out. Sarada Binding Works is the counterpoint, where a fixed sum was capital and payments geared to future profits were not. The line the Court draws through them is that a payment for something that ends with the contract is revenue and a payment for something that outlives it may not be. Applied here, the agreement failed at exactly that point. The foreign firm designed and helped set up the factory, and the factory did not end with the contract. The assessee had to return the plans and designs, but nothing stopped it going on making springs in the plant the collaboration had built. Something had been added to the assessee's capital and had stayed there. The last step answers the argument from form. A royalty on turnover looks like a recurring revenue payment, and the assessee relied on that. The Court's answer is that the mode of payment does not decide the character of what was bought - the same composite consideration can be paid in instalments geared to sales and still be, in part, the price of a factory. In the words reproduced by the source cited on this page: "It is difficult to hold that the entire payment made is a revenue expenditure merely because the payment is required to be made on a certain percentage of the rates of the gross turnover of the products…" The decision followed or applied Alembic Chemical Works Co. Ltd. v Commissioner of Income Tax, Gujarat, 177 (1989) ITR 377 - reasoning set out at length and adopted; Empire Jute Co. Ltd. v Commissioner of Income-Tax, 124 (1980) ITR 1 - the passage on the enduring-benefit test breaking down; Commissioner of Income-Tax, Bombay City I v CIBA of India Ltd., 69 (1968) ITR 692 - a licence for a limited period, revenue; Commissioner of Income-Tax v Lucas-T.V.S. Limited, 110 (1977) ITR 338 - no right to manufacture after the licence expired; Commissioner of Income-Tax, Madras (Central) v Sarada Binding Works, 102 (1976) ITR 187 - fixed sum capital, payments on future profits revenue; Agarwal Hardware Works (P) Ltd. v Commissioner of Income-Tax, West Bengal-I, 121 (1980) ITR 510 - patents not usable after termination; Commissioner of Income-Tax, Bombay City-I v Tata Engineering & Locomotive Co Pvt. Ltd., 123 (1980) ITR 538 - technique of production, revenue.
It was decided by the Supreme Court on 1997-02-11 and is reported as [1997] 224 ITR 342 (SC); appeals by special leave from the judgment of the Madras High Court reported at [1979] 117 ITR 55. Binding on every court and authority in India. A Supreme Court decision binds every assessing officer, every Commissioner (Appeals), every bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal and every High Court in India. An officer who declines to follow it is acting contrary to law, and that refusal is itself a ground of appeal. On section 37(1), section 256(1), section 34 (Act of 2025), 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 department, and it appears in this library for that reason — you need to know what the Assessing Officer will cite against you. The appeals were dismissed, without any order as to costs. The Court began by listing the factors on which the character of a payment under a collaboration agreement depends: whether the assessee obtained a completely new plant with a completely new process and completely new technology for manufacture of the product, or the payment was made for technical know-how for the betterment of a product already being produced; whether the improvisation is part and parcel of the existing business or a new business was set up with the technical know-how paid for; whether on expiry of the agreement the assessee has to give back the plans and designs while remaining able to manufacture in the factory set up with the foreign firm's collaboration; the cumulative effect of the various terms and conditions of the agreement; and whether the assessee derived benefits accruing to its capital for which the payment was made. It then set out the reasoning in Alembic Chemical Works Co. Ltd. v Commissioner of Income Tax and adopted it, in particular that in the infinite variety of situational diversities no general rule can be formulated, that there is no single definitive criterion which by itself is demarcative, and that the once-for-all test and the test of enduring benefit may not be conclusive. Reviewing CIBA of India, Lucas-T.V.S., Sarada Binding Works, Agarwal Hardware Works, Tata Engineering and Locomotive and Empire Jute, the Court observed that the tests applied have varied and that the ultimate question is whether the expenditure makes an accretion to the capital asset, in which case it is capital. On the facts, the Tribunal having considered the different clauses of the agreement and concluded that what was set up was a new business, that the foreign firm had not only furnished information and technical know-how but rendered valuable services in setting up the factory itself, and that after the expiry of the agreement there was no embargo on the assessee continuing to manufacture the product, the Court held it difficult to hold that the entire payment was revenue expenditure merely because it was required to be made as a percentage of gross turnover. The High Court was fully justified in answering the reference in favour of the Revenue. It arises in Deductions & Disallowances and How Tax Law Is Read matters, on section 37(1), section 256(1), section 34 (Act of 2025) of the Income Tax Act 1961, and was decided by Supreme Court of India - S.C. Agrawal and G.B. Pattanaik JJ. 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. Ask whether the business was new or already being carried on. A new business set up with the collaborator's plans and designs is the fact pattern that produced apportionment here. Ask what happens when the agreement ends. The Court treated it as significant that the assessee had only to return the plans and designs, and that there was no embargo on continuing to manufacture the product afterwards. Do not argue that a turnover-linked royalty must be revenue. That is the argument the Court rejected in terms. If apportionment is on the cards, put your own proportion on the file with reasons, because the judgment gives no method. The quarter here was the Tribunal's finding and the Supreme Court did not examine how it was reached. Where the payment improved a product you already made, cite Alembic Chemical Works instead. This judgment applies Alembic's reasoning and reaches a different result only because the facts were different.
Still good law. The decision stands and is the authority relied on whenever the Department seeks to split a collaboration payment rather than disallow it whole. Courts print the citation when they deal with a composite payment - the Bombay High Court in Commissioner of Income-tax v Kirloskar Tractors Ltd. on 3 February 1998, the Madras High Court in Southern Pressings (P.) Ltd. on 9 January 1998 and in Sakthi Sugars on 10 August 2010, the Delhi High Court in J K Synthetics on 17 December 2008, and the Supreme Court itself in Commissioner of Income Tax v Bharti Hexacom Ltd. on 16 October 2023, where the character of a telecom licence fee was in issue. It has to be read with Alembic Chemical Works Co. Ltd. v Commissioner of Income Tax, and the two do not conflict. This judgment quotes Alembic at length and adopts its reasoning, then applies it to facts that point the other way: the foreign firm did not merely supply know-how but furnished plans and designs and rendered valuable services in setting up the factory itself, the business was new, and on the expiry of the agreement there was no bar on the assessee continuing to manufacture. Alembic is the case where an existing line of production was improved. This is the case where a business was established. Read together they mark both sides of the same line. Two limits on how far it travels. The Court did not lay down the quarter as a proportion; that figure was the Tribunal's on these facts and was not disturbed, and nothing in the judgment supplies a method for arriving at any other figure. And the Court expressly reasoned that the mode of payment does not settle the character of the payment - a royalty geared to turnover is not revenue merely because it is geared to turnover. 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 about tax years beginning before that date, so the case governs those years directly. The general deduction is now section 34 of the 2025 Act. No source could be cited for that finding. 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 was read on its own text from the cause title to the last sentence. The page carries no headnote or summary block above the opinion, so everything relied on here comes from the reasoning of Pattanaik J. The cause title needs a word. The document is headed with the assessee's name as Jonas Woodhead and Sons Ltd., Madras, while every later court that cites the decision prints Jonas Woodhead and Sons (India) Ltd. The reports carry the second form and this record uses it, because that is the form a practitioner will meet in a citation. The company on the other side of the collaboration agreement, referred to throughout as the foreign firm, carried the same name without the word India in it, which is the source of the confusion. The citation was not taken from the judgment, which does not carry one. The judgment gives only the report of the High Court decision under appeal, at 117 ITR 55. The Supreme Court's own citation used here is fixed by later judgments that print it while applying the decision, and those reproductions agree with one another. The passage from Alembic that this judgment sets out is printed in the source in numbered sub-paragraphs. That numbering is a reporter's arrangement of the earlier judgment and not the Supreme Court's own division of its reasoning in Alembic, so nothing is quoted here as Alembic's words on the strength of that block alone. The sentences reproduced from Alembic on this site were located in the body of Alembic's own opinion. One caution, and it is the reason this record is marked as a trap. The case is filed as a Revenue case and the assessee lost, but it is quite as often cited against the Department. It is the Supreme Court saying that a composite payment may be split, which cuts both ways: it defeats the assessee who insists the whole royalty must be revenue, and it equally defeats the officer who insists the whole must be capital. The two propositions a practitioner takes from it are that the character of the payment is decided by what the agreement delivered and not by how the money was paid, and that where what was delivered was partly the establishment of a business and partly its running, the answer may be partly one and partly the other. The judgment does not say how the apportionment is to be made. The Tribunal had held a quarter of the royalty to be capital, and the question referred asked only whether it was right to do so; the Supreme Court upheld the answer and never examined how the proportion was arrived at, what it was attributable to, or what a different proportion would have required. A practitioner facing an apportionment therefore has this case as authority that apportionment is permissible and no authority at all on the arithmetic. It does not name the section under which the deduction was claimed. The question referred speaks of the provisions of the Income-tax Act and the judgment discusses capital and revenue without citing section 37 anywhere. That is a feature of the reference era and does not affect the substance, but it means the case is a section 37(1) authority by subject matter and not by its own words. It does not decide what happens to the part held capital. Nothing is said about depreciation, about amortisation, or about how the capitalised quarter is to be carried in the assessee's accounts or in its block of assets. It does not deal with section 35AB or with the later treatment of know-how as a depreciable intangible. Neither existed for assessment years 1967-68 and 1968-69. It does not decide the case on the mode of payment, and it should not be cited as holding that a running royalty is capital. The Court's point is the narrower one that a payment is not revenue merely because it is a percentage of turnover. Whether a royalty in some other agreement is wholly revenue is left where it was. It records no figures beyond the two royalty payments of Rs.24,000 and Rs.47,000 and gives no account of the plant, its cost or its life. 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.
The appeals were dismissed, without any order as to costs. The Court began by listing the factors on which the character of a payment under a collaboration agreement depends: whether the assessee obtained a completely new plant with a completely new process and completely new technology for manufacture of the product, or the payment was made for technical know-how for the betterment of a product already being produced; whether the improvisation is part and parcel of the existing business or a new business was set up with the technical know-how paid for; whether on expiry of the agreement the assessee has to give back the plans and designs while remaining able to manufacture in the factory set up with the foreign firm's collaboration; the cumulative effect of the various terms and conditions of the agreement; and whether the assessee derived benefits accruing to its capital for which the payment was made. It then set out the reasoning in Alembic Chemical Works Co. Ltd. v Commissioner of Income Tax and adopted it, in particular that in the infinite variety of situational diversities no general rule can be formulated, that there is no single definitive criterion which by itself is demarcative, and that the once-for-all test and the test of enduring benefit may not be conclusive. Reviewing CIBA of India, Lucas-T.V.S., Sarada Binding Works, Agarwal Hardware Works, Tata Engineering and Locomotive and Empire Jute, the Court observed that the tests applied have varied and that the ultimate question is whether the expenditure makes an accretion to the capital asset, in which case it is capital. On the facts, the Tribunal having considered the different clauses of the agreement and concluded that what was set up was a new business, that the foreign firm had not only furnished information and technical know-how but rendered valuable services in setting up the factory itself, and that after the expiry of the agreement there was no embargo on the assessee continuing to manufacture the product, the Court held it difficult to hold that the entire payment was revenue expenditure merely because it was required to be made as a percentage of gross turnover. The High Court was fully justified in answering the reference in favour of the Revenue.
TaxSphere, “Jonas Woodhead and Sons (India) Ltd v CIT”, https://taxnotice.vittsphere.com/caselaw/case/jonas-woodhead-v-cit-a-composite-collaboration-payment-may-be-split/ (validity last checked 2026-09-23)
The judgment itself is a government work and may be quoted freely. The summary, the validity note and the reasoning on this page are this library's own writing: quote them with attribution, and please do not present either as the words of the court — this page keeps the two apart and so should a quotation of it.
Every entry in this library links to where it was found, so you can check it yourself rather than take our word for it.
I paid a foreign firm a lump sum for technical know-how that raised the yield of a product I was already making. The Assessing Officer says section 37(1) is shut because I bought an asset of enduring benefit. Is the payment capital?
I demolished my landlord's building and put up a new one at my own cost, and the new building belongs to him. I got a 39-year lease at a fraction of the market rent for it. Is what I spent capital or revenue?
The AO disallowed a payment because the statute calls it a penalty. Does the label decide it?
The Commissioner has issued a section 263 notice saying my assessment order does not discuss a deduction the officer allowed. Is a brief order by itself erroneous?