Not if you are inside the windows. Under s.94(7), buy within three months before the record date and sell within three months after — nine months for a unit — and where the dividend or income is exempt the loss is ignored to the extent of that income. Under s.94(8) bonus stripping the loss is not merely disallowed: it is ignored and then deemed to be the cost of the bonus securities or units you kept, so it comes back when you sell them. s.94(8) reached only units until the Finance Act 2022 substituted 'securities or units' with effect from assessment year 2023-24; the same amendment rewrote the definition of 'record date' to take in business trusts and Alternative Investment Funds.
Both sub-sections work off a record date, and the definition is not the one the department's own section page still serves. Clause (aa) of the Explanation, as substituted by the Finance Act 2022 with effect from assessment year 2023-24, fixes the record date by reference to a date fixed by a company, by a Mutual Fund or the Administrator of the specified undertaking or the specified company referred to in the Explanation to s.10(35), by a business trust as defined in s.2(13A), or by an Alternative Investment Fund as defined in the SEBI (Alternative Investment Funds) Regulations 2012 — "for the purposes of entitlement of the holder of the securities or units, as the case may be, to receive dividend, income, or additional securities or units without any consideration, as the case may be". The older formulation, which named the Unit Trust of India and spoke only of dividend or income, is what the departmental page prints; do not quote it for a current year.
s.94(7) is dividend and income stripping. It bites where a person "buys or acquires any securities or unit within a period of three months prior to the record date" and "sells or transfers- (i) such securities within a period of three months after such date; or (ii) such unit within a period of nine months after such date" — so the nine-month period for units is in the clause itself and not a gloss on a three-month rule — and "the dividend or income on such securities or unit received or receivable by such person is exempt". The consequence is quantified rather than total: "the loss, if any, arising to him on account of such purchase and sale of securities or unit, to the extent such loss does not exceed the amount of dividend or income received or receivable on such securities or unit, shall be ignored". So the deductible loss is the capital loss less the exempt income, floored at nil, and anything above that is still available.
The exemption condition is doing a lot of work now. Since dividends became taxable in the shareholder's hands, the condition that the dividend "is exempt" is not met on an ordinary dividend on shares, and the commentary puts it plainly: "as dividends are now not tax-free in the hands of the recipient, this concept is not very relevant considering the present tax laws". The sub-section still has work to do wherever the income on the security or unit is exempt in the recipient's hands. No decision on that reading was found on the pages consulted.
s.94(8) is bonus stripping, and the mechanism is different. The three conditions are that a person "buys or acquires any securities or units within a period of three months prior to the record date"; that "such person is allotted additional securities or units without any payment on the basis of holding of such securities or units on such date"; and that "such person sells or transfers all or any of the securities or units referred to in clause (a) within a period of nine months after such date, while continuing to hold all or any of the additional securities or units referred to in clause (b)". Then "the loss, if any, arising to him on account of such purchase and sale of all or any of such securities or units shall be ignored" — and, critically, "the amount of loss so ignored shall be deemed to be the cost of purchase or acquisition of such additional securities or units referred to in clause (b) as are held by him".
That second half is what practitioners get wrong. The loss is not destroyed. It is parked in the cost of the bonus holding, and it comes back as a smaller gain, or a loss, when those bonus securities or units are eventually sold. s.94(8) defers the benefit and changes its character and timing; it does not confiscate it. It also has no exemption condition, unlike s.94(7), and no de minimis: any loss on the original lot sold inside the window is ignored in full.
The reach of s.94(8) changed in 2022. Until then it applied only to units. The Finance Act 2022 substituted "securities or units" for "units" throughout the sub-section, and "This amendment will take effect from 1st April, 2023 and will accordingly apply in relation to the assessment year 2023-24 and subsequent assessment years." The same amendment widened the Explanation definition of "unit", which had run to units within the meaning of s.115AB, so that it now takes in "a unit of a business trust defined in clause (13A) of section 2" and the "beneficial interest of an investor in an Alternative Investment Fund" under the SEBI regulations. Bonus and dividend stripping in REIT, InvIT and AIF units is therefore inside the section from assessment year 2023-24.
That leaves the pre-2023 gap in shares, and the corpus already holds the leading authority on it. In Ayodhya Rami Reddy Alla the Telangana High Court upheld the initiation of GAAR proceedings against a bonus stripping arrangement in shares, holding that Chapter X-A is not excluded merely because a specific anti-avoidance rule occupies part of the field, and that the later widening of s.94(8) did not prevent GAAR applying to the earlier arrangement. No source found records what has become of that judgment on further appeal — an earlier draft of this note said the assessee's appeal had been admitted in the Supreme Court with a stay, and that could not be corroborated anywhere and has been removed. See the entry ayodhya-rami-reddy-alla-v-pcit-gaar for the detail and for the criticism of the reasoning.
In the Income-tax Act, 2025 the dividend and income stripping rule in s.94(7) is carried into s.175(8) and bonus stripping into s.175(9), on the source consulted.
The two sub-sections are usually met at return-filing, after the trades are done, when the client's broker statement shows a neat loss around a record date. Knowing which one applies decides whether the loss is gone up to the amount of the payout (94(7)) or has migrated into the cost of a holding the client still owns (94(8)) — and in the second case there is a positive step to take, because the deemed cost has to be tracked in the client's own records; no broker statement will carry it. The 2022 widening also means an arrangement in listed shares that was outside the specific rule for years up to assessment year 2022-23 is inside it afterwards, and for the earlier years the department's route is GAAR rather than s.94(8).
The Assessing Officer wants to tax what my client received on redemption of stock appreciation rights granted by the foreign parent as a perquisite. Is there Supreme Court authority on this?
I handed over possession of my factory and the buyer credited me with the price, but the sale deed came much later. In which year did I make the capital gain?
The company redeemed my preference shares and paid me the face value. Is that a transfer, or just a repayment?
My land was notified and an award was made under the Land Acquisition Act, but I thought the award was too low, negotiated a higher figure and executed a sale deed. The Assessing Officer now says that was a voluntary sale and denies s.10(37). Is he right?
I sold my firm's business to a company as a going concern for one lump sum. Is the surplus on plant and machinery still taxable as a balancing charge?
My mortgaged property was auctioned and the department kept what I owed it out of the proceeds. Do I pay capital gains on the whole price or only on what reached me?
We sold the goodwill our own firm built up over the years. It cost us nothing to acquire. Is the price taxable as a capital gain?
Our JDA was never registered and the project collapsed. Am I still taxed on capital gains?
Every page in this library links to what it was written from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.