If I gift money to my wife and she invests it, whose income is the interest?
Yours. Section 64 pulls back income from assets transferred to a spouse or a son's wife without adequate consideration, remuneration drawn from a concern you substantially control, and almost all of a minor child's income. Reciprocal or cross transfers arranged to sidestep it are treated as if they were direct.
Clubbing is an anti-avoidance rule, not a penalty. It adds someone else's income to yours where the law treats the arrangement as your income diverted rather than theirs earned. It applies to losses as well as income.
Section 64(1)(ii) catches remuneration. Where your spouse draws salary, commission, fees or any other remuneration from a concern in which you have a substantial interest — broadly 20% or more of voting power in a company, or 20% or more of the profits — that remuneration is clubbed with the income of whichever of you has the greater total income. The exception is real: clubbing does not apply where the spouse has technical or professional qualifications and the income is solely attributable to the application of that knowledge and experience. A qualified finance professional drawing a market salary is outside it; a nominal appointment is not.
Section 64(1)(iv) catches assets. Income from an asset transferred to your spouse, directly or indirectly, otherwise than for adequate consideration, is clubbed with your income. The relationship must exist both at transfer and when the income accrues, so a transfer before marriage or after a decree of divorce is outside it, as is an asset bought out of household savings. Only the first-generation income is clubbed: if your spouse reinvests the clubbed interest, the income on that reinvestment is her own.
Section 64(1)(vi) applies the same rule to an asset transferred to your son's wife. Note the asymmetry — a transfer to a son-in-law is not covered by the equivalent clause. Sections 64(1)(vii) and (viii) close the obvious workaround by catching transfers to any person or association of persons, for inadequate consideration, made so that the income may be applied for the benefit of your spouse or your son's wife.
Section 64(1A) deals with minor children, including adopted and step-children, and it is far wider. All the minor's income is clubbed with the parent having the greater total income, and where the parents are separated, with the parent who maintains the child. Two exceptions matter: income of a minor suffering a disability of the kind specified for s.80U, and income earned by the minor's own manual work or through the application of the child's skill, talent or specialised knowledge. A child actor's fee or contest winnings earned by effort are not clubbed. Section 10(32) then exempts Rs 1,500 per minor child whose income is clubbed. Clubbing stops when the child turns 18.
Section 64(2) deals with the HUF route. Where an individual converts self-acquired property into property of the HUF of which he is a member, or throws it into the common stock, without adequate consideration, the income from that property continues to be clubbed with the individual. Genuinely ancestral income, gifts to the HUF from non-members, and income earned on the HUF's own accumulations are not affected.
Cross transfers are the point at which people usually get caught. The clauses say 'directly or indirectly'. If you gift to B's spouse and B gifts a matching amount to yours, the arrangement is treated as if each of you had transferred to your own spouse, and the lower of the two amounts is clubbed with each transferor. The burden of showing that the transfers are genuinely independent falls on the taxpayer.
Splitting income within a family is the oldest planning idea there is, and s.64 is drafted to defeat most versions of it. Getting it wrong produces the worst of both worlds: the department adds the income to the transferor and the transferee has already declared it, so the same money is taxed twice until you unwind it. Because clubbing is a computation rule rather than a deduction, it applies whichever regime you are in.
I transferred shares to my fiancee a week before we married. Will the dividends on those shares be clubbed with my income?
I gifted shares to my wife years ago. She has now sold them at a profit. Is that capital gain clubbed with my income, or is it only the dividends that come back to me?
I pay my husband a salary in my business. Can the AO club it because he has no degree?
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