Section 160(1)(i)

Section 160(1)(i) — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 160(1)(i), in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Statutory position — s.160: the five, and only five, classes of representative assessee, and what Explanations 1 and 2 do to an unwritten trust CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  The Assessing Officer has issued a notice describing me as the 'representative assessee' of a family trust. Who can lawfully be made a representative assessee, and does being called one make me the assessee?
  Section 160(1) is an exhaustive list of five classes and nobody outside it can be made a representative assessee: (i) the agent of a non-resident, in respect of income of the non-resident specified in section 9(1), including a person treated as an agent under section 163; (ii) the guardian or manager of a minor, lunatic or idiot who is entitled to receive or is in receipt of the income on that person's behalf; (iii) the Court of Wards, the Administrator-General, the Official Trustee or any receiver or manager (including any person, whatever his designation, who in fact manages property on behalf of another) appointed by or under an order of a court; (iv) a trustee appointed under a trust declared by a duly executed instrument in writing, whether testamentary or otherwise, including a wakf deed valid under the Mussalman Wakf Validating Act, 1913; and (v) a trustee appointed under an oral trust. Section 160(2) then says that every representative assessee shall be deemed to be an assessee for the purposes of the Act, so yes — you are an assessee, with an assessee's rights of appeal as well as an assessee's exposure.
• Statutory position — s.163: who may be treated as the agent of a non-resident, the broker proviso, and the s.163(2) hearing that cannot be skipped CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  The Assessing Officer wants to treat my company as the agent of a foreign supplier because we have dealings with it. On what basis can he, and what am I entitled to before he does it?
  Section 163(1) defines 'agent', in relation to a non-resident, as including any person in India who is employed by or on behalf of the non-resident; or who has any business connection with the non-resident; or from or through whom the non-resident is in receipt of any income, whether directly or indirectly; or who is the trustee of the non-resident — and it includes also any other person, whether resident or non-resident, who has acquired by means of a transfer a capital asset in India. Section 163(2) is a hard condition precedent: 'No person shall be treated as the agent of a non-resident unless he has had an opportunity of being heard by the Assessing Officer as to his liability to be treated as such.' The Year 2023 and Year 2025 pages both carry an Explanation providing that for the purposes of sub-section (1) the expression 'business connection' has the meaning assigned to it in Explanation 2 to section 9(1)(i); it is on neither of the two earlier pages read, so it was inserted after 2001.

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.