Section 160(1)(ii)

Section 160(1)(ii) — the law in short

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

• R.P. Sarathy for Minor M. Pranuthi v Joint CIT High CourtHelps departmentValidity unconfirmed
  My ward is a minor whose parents are both dead. There is no parent to club her income with, so is her income simply not taxable at all until she turns eighteen?
  No. Section 64(1A) is a machinery provision, not a charging provision, so the absence of a parent does not take the minor's income out of charge. Where there is no parent to club with, s.160(1)(ii) applies and the guardian or manager of the minor is the representative assessee, bound to return that income and discharge the tax on it.
• 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.

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.