Notification No. 2817 — An exemption granted under section 104 of the Income-tax Act, 1961

What this is

Notification No. 2817 was published on 14 August 1964. Its subject is An exemption granted under section 104 of the Income-tax Act, 1961.

This grants an exemption or a relief under a provision that allows one. Read the conditions attached: an exemption notification is construed strictly, and a condition missed is the exemption lost.

What it does

The Central Government, in exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 104 of the Income-tax Act, 1961, and being of opinion that it is necessary and expedient in the public interest so to do, exempts every Indian company engaged wholly or partly in the business of printing and publishing newspapers, magazines and journals, or any one or more of them, from the operation of that section in respect of the previous year relevant to the assessment year commencing on the 1st day of April, 1965 and any subsequent assessment year. The exemption is subject to provisos: the publication or publications must be printed in a press owned by the company; the value of the company's capital assets being plant and machinery, other than office appliances and road transport vehicles, as shown in its books of account on the last day of the relevant previous year, must exceed rupees ten lakhs but be less than rupees fifty lakhs; and where the company is engaged only in such business, its income attributable to that business included in its total income for the relevant previous year must be not less than fifty-one per cent of that total income.

Why it was issued

The Central Government was of opinion that it is necessary and expedient in the public interest to grant the exemption.

Who it reaches

Indian companies printing and publishing newspapers, magazines or journals
such companies owning their own printing press
shareholders of such companies, whose dividends bear on a section 104 charge
assessing officers applying section 104 to a publishing company

The provisions it speaks to

Left, the provision of the Income-tax Act, 1961 as the instrument itself names it. Right, the section of the Income-tax Act, 2025 that the department’s own concordance maps it to — which is where the same ground is now covered.

Under the 1961 Act	Now
s.104	no counterpart recorded

The instrument, as the Board published it

The words below are the department’s own, reproduced from its published text. Where the department’s copy carried a publisher’s notes after the instrument, those are not reproduced.

In exercise of the powers conferred by sub-section (3) of section 104 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (43 of 1961), the Central Government, being of opinion that it is necessary and expedient in the public interest so to do, hereby exempts every Indian company engaged wholly or partly in the business of printing and publishing newspapers, magazines and journals or any one or more of them, from the operation of that section in respect of the previous year relevant to the assessment year commencing on the 1st day of April, 1965, and any subsequent assessment year :

Provided that -----

(a) such publication or publications is or are printed in the press owned by the company ;

(b) the value of the capital assets of the company being plant and machinery (other than officer appliances and road transport vehicles) as shown in its books of account on the last day of the relevant previous year exceeds rupees ten lakhs but is less than rupees fifty lakhs ; and

(c) Where the company is only engaged in such business, its income, attributable to the said business, which is included in its total income for the relevant previous year, is not less than fifty-one per cent of such total income

From when

the previous year relevant to the assessment year commencing on 1 April 1965, and any subsequent assessment year.

What to watch

The exemption runs from the previous year relevant to the assessment year commencing on 1st April, 1965 and applies to any subsequent assessment year.
It fails if the publication is not printed in a press owned by the company.
The plant and machinery test is a band, not a floor: the book value on the last day of the relevant previous year must exceed rupees ten lakhs and be less than rupees fifty lakhs, and office appliances and road transport vehicles are left out of that value.
Where the company carries on only the publishing business, at least fifty-one per cent of its total income for the relevant previous year must be attributable to that business.

Where you meet it

In an assessment of a publishing company where the Income-tax Officer proposes an order under section 104 for failure to distribute the statutory percentage of profits as dividends.

On the same provision

Other instruments in this library that name the same provision of the 1961 Act. They are not necessarily still operative, and a later one may have replaced an earlier one without saying so.

Circular No. 347 — 727. Book publishing company - Whether qualifies to be treated as company engaged in manufacture or processing of goods 7 July 1982
Notification No. 3210 — An exemption granted under section 104 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 8 August 1969
Circular No. 24 — 728. Whether production of motion pictures amounts to manufacture or processing of goods within the meaning of section 1 23 July 1969
Notification No. 2007 — An exemption granted under section 104 of the Income-tax Act, 1961 6 June 1967

← Notification No. 3673 · Notification No. 2772 →

What a notification is. A notification is made under a power the Act itself gives, and within that power it is law — unlike a circular, which only binds the department. Its reach is the reach of the enabling provision and no wider, and the date it carries decides from when it works.

Source: the Income Tax Department’s own published text — its page for this instrument.