No source found answers it. Three provisions govern the question and they do not point the same way: s.80AC asks only whether a return of income was furnished by the s.139(1) due date, s.80A(5) refuses the deduction where no claim was made in the return of income, and s.139(5) lets a person who has furnished a return revise it. On the words, a society whose original return went in on time has furnished the return the gate asks for; against that, the department will say the claim, and not merely the return, has to be in by the due date. No decision either way could be found.
**The words of the gate.** The Finance Act 2018 substituted s.80AC. The department's own reproduction of the section is still the 2006 text, listing only s.80-IA to s.80-IE, on the bare address and on the three numbered ones; the substituted section had to be read in the Government's Bill for 2018, where it appears at clause 23 in these terms: 'Where in computing the total income of an assessee of any previous year relevant to the assessment year commencing on or after- (i) the 1st day of April, 2006 but before the 1st day of April, 2018, any deduction is admissible under section 80-IA or section 80-IAB or section 80-IB or section 80-IC or section 80-ID or section 80-IE; (ii) the 1st day of April, 2018, any deduction is admissible under any provision of this Chapter under the heading "C.-Deductions in respect of certain incomes", no such deduction shall be allowed to him unless he furnishes a return of his income for such assessment year on or before the due date specified under sub-section (1) of section 139.' The explanatory memorandum, reproduced on a second source, puts the same thing in its own words and fixes the year: the amendment takes effect from 1 April 2018 and applies in relation to assessment year 2018-19 and subsequent years. The heading C block runs from s.80H to s.80RRB, and s.80P sits inside it.
Read the operative words carefully, because the whole question turns on them. The condition is that the assessee 'furnishes a return of his income for such assessment year on or before the due date specified under sub-section (1) of section 139'. It is a condition about a return and about a date. It says nothing on its face about when the claim inside that return was made.
**The second gate, which is about the claim.** s.80A(5) is the provision that speaks to the claim, and it is in the same heading C language: 'Where the assessee fails to make a claim in his return of income for any deduction under section 10A or section 10AA or section 10B or section 10BA or under any provision of this Chapter under the heading "C.- Deductions in respect of certain incomes", no deduction shall be allowed to him thereunder.' The department's page records it as inserted by the Finance (No. 2) Act 2009 with retrospective effect from 1 April 2009. So there are two conditions and they are not the same condition: the return must be in by the due date, and the claim must be in the return of income.
**Where a revised return sits.** s.139(5) is the revision provision. On the department's page it reads: 'If any person, having furnished a return under sub-section (1), or in pursuance of a notice issued under sub-section (1) of section 142, discovers any omission or any wrong statement therein, he may furnish a revised return at any time before the expiry of one year from the end of the relevant assessment year or before the completion of the assessment, whichever is earlier'. That page is an old snapshot - the footnote takes it only to the substitution by the Direct Tax Laws (Amendment) Act 1987 with effect from 1 April 1989 - and the sub-section has been altered since, both in the returns that may be revised and in the outer date, so the time limit for your year must be taken from the current section and not from that page. What matters here is the opening words, which have not changed in substance: the right to revise belongs to a person who has already furnished a return.
**The argument for the society.** A revised return under s.139(5) is not a fresh return standing on its own; it is a revision of the return already furnished, and the return already furnished went in by the due date. On that reading s.80AC is satisfied the moment the original return is filed in time, and s.80A(5) is satisfied because the claim is made in the return of income as it finally stands. Nothing in the substituted s.80AC fixes a date for the claim as distinct from the return.
**The argument for the department.** The purpose of the substituted section is to make the deduction depend on timely and complete disclosure, and reading it so that a bare return by the due date holds the claim open for months would empty it. On that reading, 'furnishes a return of his income' means furnishes the return in which the deduction is claimed, and s.80A(5) is put alongside it to make the point that the Act cares about the claim and not just about the paper.
**What could not be found.** No decision either way. Searches of the digests by the section, and by the section together with 'revised return', return the belated-return line, the line on returns filed only in answer to a notice under s.148, and the line on what may be adjusted at the processing stage - none of them on a claim first made in a timely revised return. Until an authority turns up, this is an argument and not an answer, and it should be put to a client in exactly those terms.
**A practical consequence.** A protective return filed by the due date and completed later is better than nothing, because it at least puts the assessee on the right side of the date limb, and it costs nothing to do. But it is not a fix, and a society that plans on it is planning on an open question. The fix is to get the statutory audit and the return done by the s.139(1) date, and where the Registrar's auditor makes that impossible, to file the return complete with the claim on the best figures available and revise the figures rather than introduce the claim.
For a society that has lost one year to the gate, the natural plan for the next year is to file something by the due date and finish it later. Whether that plan works is unresolved, and a practitioner who presents it as safe is exposing the client to the same total loss a second time - and the second time the reasonable-cause and hardship story is much weaker, because the problem was known. Knowing that the point is open changes the advice from 'file a protective return' to 'file a return that already contains the claim'.
I paid advance tax for the year but had not filed my return when the search took place. Can the department still call that income undisclosed?
I deducted TDS during the year but paid it after 31 March, though before I filed my return — can the expense still be disallowed under section 40(a)(ia)?
I have given the excise authorities a bank guarantee for unpaid bottling fee. Does that count as actual payment under section 43B - and is bottling fee even covered by section 43B?
The AO cites Citizen Co-operative Society to deny my 80P claim. How far does it go?
Our amalgamation was sanctioned long after the deadline for a revised return. Must the department accept revised returns filed to give effect to the scheme?
You want to make a claim you missed, but the time to revise the return has gone. Can you just write to the officer?
We are a state-level co-operative agricultural and rural development bank. Does 80P(4) block our deduction?
My society lends to non-members too. Does that wipe out its 80P(2)(a)(i) deduction?
Every page in this library links to what it was written from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.
