Section 16(3) of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922 — the law in short
What the courts have decided on section 16(3) of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.
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CIT v J.H. Gotla
Supreme CourtHelps taxpayer
My wife's and minor children's share income from a firm is clubbed into my total income. Can I set my own carried forward business loss against it, when I am not a partner in that firm?
Yes. The Supreme Court held that where the clubbing provision operates, the profit or loss from the business of the wife or minor child that is included in the assessee's total income must be treated as profit or loss from a business carried on by him for the purpose of carrying forward and setting off the loss. A strict literal reading would deny the set-off to the assessee, while the wife and children could not claim it either because the income is taxed in his hands, and Parliament cannot have intended that. The clubbing provision exists to counteract the transfer, not to punish the transferor.
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Provat Kumar Mitter v CIT
Supreme CourtHelps department
I assigned the dividends on my shares to my wife for her life but kept the shares. Is that dividend still my income?
Yes. The Supreme Court held that the deed of 19 January 1953 was not a transfer of any existing property. The assessee kept the shares and so kept the right to participate in the company's profits; what he made was a contract to make over to his wife, during her life, every dividend that might in future be declared on those shares. The company could pay only the registered shareholder or on his orders, so the income continued to accrue to him and was afterwards paid over under the contract. That is an application of income after it accrues, not a diversion before it accrues.
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.