Section 28(v)

Section 28(v) — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 28(v), in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Mr. Anandkumar v ACIT High CourtHelps department
  I am a partner. Can I take the salary and interest my firm pays me, call it my turnover, and offer 8 per cent of it under s.44AD?
  No. The High Court held that a partner receiving remuneration and interest from his firm is not himself carrying on a business, so those receipts cannot be termed a turnover, and they do not qualify as gross receipts either. Section 44AD applies only to an eligible assessee engaged in an eligible business having a total turnover or gross receipts, and the assessee here had neither effected sales nor rendered services; the sums had already been debited in the firms' own profit and loss accounts. The appeal was dismissed and both questions of law were answered against the assessee and in favour of the Revenue. This is the answer to a scheme that is still marketed to partners, and it is a High Court answer, not a Tribunal one.
• Rameshchandra Balachand v JCIT (OSD) ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  The officer says my partner is a sleeping partner because she is not in the office every day. Can he disallow her remuneration?
  No, on these facts — but the case is decided on a wider ground first. For five of the seven years the disallowance fell on jurisdiction: those years were unabated when the search took place, and a statement recorded under s.132(4) is not incriminating material capable of supporting an addition under s.153A. On the merits, taken in the alternative and carrying the remaining two years, the Tribunal held that not attending the office daily does not make a partner a sleeping partner where the work she did was proved, and noted that the remuneration was taxed in her hands under s.28(v). The disallowance was made under s.37 as expenditure not for the purposes of the business, not under s.40(b).
• Statutory position — section 40(b)(v): the working-partner remuneration ceiling, raised from AY 2025-26 CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  What is the maximum remuneration my firm can deduct for its working partners for the year I am filing now, and does the old professional / non-professional split still exist?
  For assessment year 2025-26 onwards the ceiling is Rs 3,00,000 or 90 per cent of the book profit, whichever is more, on the first Rs 6,00,000 of book profit or in case of a loss, and 60 per cent of the balance of the book profit. Those figures were substituted by the Finance (No. 2) Act 2024 (Act No. 15 of 2024) with effect from 1 April 2025. For assessment years 2010-11 to 2024-25 the same two-band table applied but with Rs 1,50,000 and Rs 3,00,000 in place of Rs 3,00,000 and Rs 6,00,000. The separate table for professional firms disappeared from AY 2010-11 and there is now one table for all firms.
• Statutory position — sections 184 and 185: what a firm loses when it is not assessed as a firm CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  The AO has invoked section 185 because of a defect in the partnership deed filed with our return. What exactly do we lose, and does the partner get any relief?
  The firm loses every rupee it paid its partners. Section 185 provides that where a firm does not comply with section 184 for any assessment year, it is so assessed that no deduction by way of interest, salary, bonus, commission or remuneration to any partner is allowed in computing its business income. Section 184(5) imposes the same consequence where there is a section 144 failure. The partner is not taxed on the same amounts, because both provisions end by saying those sums are not chargeable under clause (v) of section 28.
• Statutory position — sections 10(2A) and 28(v): the share of profit is exempt, the remuneration and interest are not CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  The AO says the whole of what I received from my firm is taxable. Which part of a partner's receipts from his firm is actually exempt, and how is the exempt share computed?
  Only the partner's share in the total income of the firm is exempt, and only where the firm is separately assessed as such — that is section 10(2A). Interest, salary, bonus, commission and remuneration due to or received by a partner from the firm are not covered by the exemption at all; they are charged in the partner's hands as business income under section 28(v). The proviso to section 28(v) then works the other way, reducing the partner's income to the extent the firm was denied the deduction under section 40(b).

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.