Section 112A

Section 112A — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 112A, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Embassy Office Parks REIT v DCIT — a REIT cannot amortise its IPO expenses under section 35D(2)(c) because it is not a company ITATHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  Our REIT incurred large expenses on its initial public offer and listing. Can it write them off over ten years under section 35D like a listed company?
  No, on the Bangalore Tribunal's reasoning. Clause (c) of section 35D(2) opens with the words 'where the assessee is a company', and a SEBI-registered Real Estate Investment Trust constituted under the Indian Trusts Act 1882 is neither a company under the Companies Act 2013 nor a company within section 2(17) of the Income-tax Act, so the deduction is unavailable however closely the public issue of units resembles a public issue of shares. The Tribunal held those opening words to be a conscious legislative limitation and not surplusage, refused to read units as shares, and dismissed the appeal.
• Ramesh Jaisinghani v DCIT ITATHelps taxpayerSuperseded by amendment
  The officer has taken the cost of my bonus shares as nil and taxed the whole sale price under s.112A. Does the grandfathered value as on 31 January 2018 not apply to bonus shares?
  The Mumbai Tribunal held that it does. Bonus shares on which securities transaction tax has been paid fall within s.55(2)(ac), which is a special computation code for shares eligible under s.112A, and it prevails over the general rule in s.55(2)(aa) that takes the cost of bonus shares as nil. Taking the cost as nil inside the s.112A regime would tax appreciation up to 31 January 2018 and defeat the grandfathering the section was enacted to preserve. On the facts the fair market value as on 31 January 2018, taken at Rs. 500 per share from the assessee's valuation report, was adopted as the cost of acquisition. Read all of this against the amendment the order turns on: the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024 inserted clause (AA) into Explanation (a)(iii) of s.55(2)(ac), supplying a fair market value for exactly this class of shares - equity shares not listed on 31 January 2018 but listed afterwards, on a sale of unlisted shares under an offer for sale in an initial public offering - and Parliament expressed it to take effect from 1 April 2018, that is retrospectively, from assessment year 2018-19 onwards, which covers the assessment year decided here. Parliament has therefore already legislated over the gap the principal ground relies on. The Tribunal held that insertion substantive rather than clarificatory and so incapable of reaching a transaction already completed; if that characterisation is wrong, the principal ground does not survive. This is a Tribunal decision from October 2025 on a very large sum and its final fate is not known.
• Statutory position — section 111A: short-term gains where STT is paid, and what happens where it is not CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  My client's short-term gains on shares are partly from on-market STT-paid sales and partly from an off-market transfer. Does the concessional rate cover both, and what is the rate now?
  Section 111A covers only a short-term capital asset that is an equity share, a unit of an equity oriented fund or a unit of a business trust where the sale transaction is chargeable to securities transaction tax. Where STT is not chargeable — an off-market sale, unlisted shares, a transfer outside the exchange — section 111A simply does not apply and the short-term gain goes into total income at the assessee's ordinary rate. The concessional rate itself is fifteen per cent for a transfer before 23 July 2024 and twenty per cent for a transfer on or after that date.
• Statutory position — section 112A: the long-term rate and the exempt slice, before and after 23 July 2024 CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  My client sold listed equity shares twice in FY 2024-25 — once in June 2024 and once in September 2024. What rate and what exempt threshold apply to each lot?
  Two different rates apply inside the same previous year, but only ONE exempt slice. For a transfer BEFORE 23 July 2024 the section 112A rate is ten per cent; for a transfer ON OR AFTER 23 July 2024 it is twelve and a half per cent. The exempt slice is one lakh twenty-five thousand rupees for the whole of the previous year — the proviso to section 112A(2)(i) says in terms that the limit applies on the AGGREGATE of the long-term capital gains under both sub-clauses — so it is not split between the two rate blocks and the pre-23-July lot does not get a separate one lakh rupee slice. The one lakh rupee figure governs transfers up to 31 March 2024 only. Both changes were made by the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024 with effect from 23 July 2024.
• Statutory position — section 2(42A): only two holding periods from 23 July 2024 CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  Is a listed bond still a long-term asset only after three years, and what about units of a listed business trust? My client transferred both in late 2024.
  From 23 July 2024 there are only two holding periods: twelve months for all listed securities and twenty-four months for everything else. The thirty-six month period is gone, so units of a listed business trust move from thirty-six months to twelve, and bonds, debentures and gold move from thirty-six months to twenty-four; unlisted shares and immovable property stay at twenty-four.
• Statutory position — s.115R, s.115S and s.115T: tax on income distributed by a mutual fund or UTI, the exemptions in the provisos to s.115R(2), and the deemed assessee in default CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both waysSuperseded by amendment
  My client is a mutual fund trustee and has a demand for tax on income distributed to unit holders for a year before 2020. What rate applied to which kind of fund, what was exempt, and who is in default?
  Section 115R(2) charged a specified company or a Mutual Fund to additional income-tax on income distributed to its unit holders on or before 31 March 2020, at twenty-five per cent where distributed to an individual or HUF by a money market mutual fund or a liquid fund, thirty per cent to any other person by such a fund, ten per cent to any person by an equity oriented fund, twenty-five per cent to an individual or HUF by any other fund, and thirty per cent to any other person by any other fund; sub-section (2A) grosses the distributed income up. Section 115S charges simple interest at one per cent a month for late payment of the s.115R tax, and s.115T deems the person responsible, and the specified company or Mutual Fund, to be an assessee in default with the whole recovery machinery applying.
• Statutory position — section 55(2)(ac): the 31 January 2018 grandfathered cost, limb by limb CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  My client bought listed shares in 2012 and sold them last year. How exactly do I work out the cost of acquisition under the grandfathering rule, and does the 31 January 2018 price simply replace the cost?
  No — the 31 January 2018 price does not replace the cost, and it is not a straight 'higher of cost or market' either. The cost is the HIGHER of (i) the actual cost of acquisition and (ii) the LOWER of (A) the fair market value and (B) the full value of consideration; fair market value for a share listed on 31 January 2018 is the highest price quoted on a recognised stock exchange on that date.
• Statutory position — section 10(38): the third proviso, Notification 43/2017 and the 1 April 2018 sunset CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both waysSuperseded by amendment
  The assessing officer says my client's long-term gains on listed shares are not exempt under section 10(38) because no STT was paid when the shares were bought. Is that right, and does section 10(38) even apply to my year?
  First check the year: section 10(38) does not apply at all to a transfer made on or after 1 April 2018, because the Finance Act 2018 inserted a fourth proviso switching the clause off from that date — so for AY 2019-20 onwards the question is section 112A, not section 10(38). For a transfer up to 31 March 2018, the third proviso (inserted by the Finance Act 2017) does require STT to have been paid on ACQUISITION as well, but only in the cases carved out by the Central Government's Notification No. 43/2017 (S.O. 1789(E)) dated 5 June 2017 — the notification's main part covers all acquisitions of equity shares from 1 October 2004 that were not chargeable to STT, and only its three listed clauses take an acquisition out of the exemption.

Listed strongest first: Supreme Court, then High Court, then Tribunal, then CBDT. Nothing here has yet been read in full by a chartered accountant — open an entry to see where it came from.