I have written the debt off in my books. Is that enough, or is the officer right that something else has to be satisfied first?
The write-off is only half of it. Section 36(1)(vii) allows the deduction 'subject to the provisions of sub-section (2)', and s.36(2)(i) sets the real precondition: the debt must already have been taken into account in computing income of that year or an earlier year, or it must represent money lent in the ordinary course of a banking or money-lending business. That is what defeats most bad-debt claims, and it is a question about the origin of the debt, not about the write-off.
Section 36(1)(vii) allows a deduction for 'subject to the provisions of sub-section (2), the amount of any bad debt or part thereof which is written off as irrecoverable in the accounts of the assessee for the previous year'. Practitioners read from 'the amount' onwards and stop. The five words before it are where the disallowances come from.
On the write-off limb the law is settled and the corpus holds it at trf-ltd-v-cit-bad-debts: after 1 April 1989 the assessee does not have to establish that the debt has in fact become irrecoverable, and it is enough that it is written off as irrecoverable in the accounts. CBDT Circular No. 12/2016 adopts that position. What the officer retains is the right to check that the write-off was actually effected in the books, and the Explanation to the clause polices the boundary: 'For the purposes of this clause, any bad debt or part thereof written off as irrecoverable in the accounts of the assessee shall not include any provision for bad and doubtful debts made in the accounts of the assessee'. A provision is not a write-off. Debiting a provision account and leaving the debtor's balance untouched does not satisfy the clause.
The limb that is actually litigated is s.36(2). Its opening words and first clause read: 'In making any deduction for a bad debt or part thereof, the following provisions shall apply—(i) no such deduction shall be allowed unless such debt or part thereof has been taken into account in computing the income of the assessee of the previous year in which the amount of such debt or part thereof is written off or of an earlier previous year, or represents money lent in the ordinary course of the business of banking or money-lending which is carried on by the assessee'.
That sentence contains two doors and you must go through one of them.
**Door one: the amount was already taxed.** The debt, or the part written off, must have been taken into account in computing income — of the year of write-off or of an earlier year. This is a rule against double counting, not a rule about genuineness. A sale made on credit and credited to the profit and loss account satisfies it: the receivable is the unpaid part of income already offered. Interest accrued on a loan and credited to income satisfies it for the interest, and only for the interest. What fails, and fails routinely, is anything that never passed through the income computation at all: an advance to a supplier that was never delivered against, a security deposit, share application money that came to nothing, a loan to a sister concern, money advanced for a capital asset, a guarantee honoured on someone else's behalf. Each of those may be a real economic loss, but none of them is a bad debt within s.36(1)(vii), because the amount was never taken into account in computing income.
**Door two: money lending.** The alternative is that the amount 'represents money lent in the ordinary course of the business of banking or money-lending which is carried on by the assessee'. Every word is load-bearing. It must be money lent, so an advance for goods or services will not do. It must be in the ordinary course, so an isolated loan does not qualify. And the business of banking or money-lending must be carried on by the assessee, which means it has to be shown as a business — not an activity, not an incidental deployment of surplus funds, and not something asserted for the first time in the reply to the show-cause notice. Where the point is going to matter, it is decided by what the accounts, the objects, the registrations and the pattern of transactions over several years show, and that evidence has to exist before the year of the write-off.
When door one is shut and door two is not open, the claim under s.36(1)(vii) is gone. It does not follow that the loss is not deductible at all. The corpus concept trading-losses-incidental-to-the-business and the entry badridas-daga-v-cit-embezzlement-trading-loss deal with the other route — a loss incidental to the business, deductible in computing profits under s.28 even though no clause of s.36 covers it. That is the argument to run in the alternative, and it should be pleaded in the same reply rather than saved for appeal, because it turns on facts the officer is examining anyway.
A note on what s.36(2) contains beyond clause (i). The section page records four further clauses: clause (ii) on the position where the amount ultimately recovered falls short of the difference between the debt and the deduction allowed; clause (iii) on a debt written off in an earlier year where the officer refused the deduction then; clause (iv) on a debt found to have become bad in an earlier year, which routes the correction through s.155(6); and clause (v) on assessees to whom s.36(1)(viia) applies, requiring the debt to be debited to the provision for bad and doubtful debts account. Those four were read only in summary on the section page and are not transcribed here, so read the bare text before relying on any of them. Clause (v) and the proviso to s.36(1)(vii) together matter only to banks and the other entities covered by s.36(1)(viia), for whom the deduction is limited 'to the amount by which such debt or part thereof exceeds the credit balance in the provision for bad and doubtful debts account made under that clause'.
Under the Income-tax Act 2025, the compilation of Supreme Court authority published on itatonline.org maps old s.36(1)(vii) to new s.31. Verify against the bare 2025 Act before citing that number, and check whether the s.36(2) conditions were carried into it in the same form.
The typical bad-debt disallowance is not answered by producing the ledger, because the officer's point is usually not about the write-off. It is that the amount was never taxed in the first place. If you cannot show either that the amount passed through the income computation or that you carry on money lending as a business, the deduction under s.36(1)(vii) is not available however clean the write-off is — and the case then has to be built as a trading loss instead, which is a different argument on different facts.
My employee embezzled money from the business bank account. Can I write that off for tax?
My bank has a section 36(1)(viia) provision for rural advances. Does that provision cut down my deduction for urban bad debts actually written off under section 36(1)(vii)?
My NBFC has to debit a provision for non-performing assets to the profit and loss account under the RBI norms. Can the officer add it back when computing my taxable income?
The AO wants proof my debt is actually irrecoverable before allowing the bad debt write-off. Is that right?
I debited the bad debt to the profit and loss account and reduced debtors in the balance sheet, but did not close each debtor's ledger account — is that an actual write-off under section 36(1)(vii)?
My client is a State industrial investment corporation with a returned loss, and the Assessing Officer says the doubtful-and-loss-asset deduction under the proviso to s.36(1)(viia)(c) cannot be allowed because the five per cent limit in sub-clause (c) is computed on total income, which is nil. Is the proviso dependent on sub-clause (c) in that way?
The Assessing Officer has added our provision for bad and doubtful debts to book profit under clause (i) of Explanation 1, relying on the retrospective 2009 amendment. We reduced the provision from sundry debtors on the asset side. Does that make a difference?
The Assessing Officer has reduced my client's bad-debt claim by the s.36(1)(viia) provision created in the SAME year, not just by the opening balance. Is the current year's provision part of the credit balance for the purposes of the proviso to s.36(1)(vii)?
Every page in this library links to what it was written from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.