Section 35AD(3)

Section 35AD(3) — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 35AD(3), in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Statutory position — s.35AD(3) and (4): claim s.35AD and you lose s.10AA and every Chapter VI-A 'C' deduction for that business, for that year and every other year CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  We claimed section 35AD on a hotel and also want a Chapter VI-A deduction on the profits of the same hotel in a later year. The Assessing Officer says we cannot have both. Is that right, and does it affect only the year of the section 35AD claim?
  The Assessing Officer is right, and the bar is wider than most people expect. Section 35AD(3) provides that where a deduction under section 35AD is claimed AND ALLOWED in respect of a specified business for any assessment year, no deduction shall be allowed under section 10AA or under Chapter VI-A under the heading "C.—Deductions in respect of certain incomes" in relation to that specified business "for the same or any other assessment year". So one year's section 35AD claim closes off the profit-linked deductions for that business permanently, not merely for that year. Section 35AD(4) is the companion rule and works on the expenditure rather than the profits: no deduction of the expenditure referred to in sub-section (1) is allowed under any other section in any previous year, or under section 35AD itself in any other previous year, if the deduction has been claimed or opted by the assessee and allowed under section 35AD. Section 35AD(3) did not always include section 10AA — those words were added by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2014 with effect from 1 April 2015, so for AY 2014-15 and earlier the bar reached only Chapter VI-A heading C; and the words "or opted" in sub-section (4) came in with the Finance Act, 2020 (Act 12 of 2020) with effect from 1 April 2020, when the deduction itself became optional.
• Statutory position — s.73A: a specified business loss can only be set off against another specified business, and it carries forward indefinitely CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  My client's section 35AD hotel has thrown up a large loss because the whole capital cost was written off. Can that loss be set against the profits of its other, ordinary business, and for how many years can it be carried forward?
  No, it cannot. Section 73A(1) provides that any loss computed in respect of any specified business referred to in section 35AD "shall not be set off except against profits and gains, if any, of any other specified business". Section 73A(2) then allows the unabsorbed part — or the whole loss where there is no other specified business — to be carried forward to the following assessment year, subject to the other provisions of Chapter VI, to be set off against the profits of any specified business carried on by the assessee assessable for that year, and if it still cannot be wholly set off, to be carried forward to the following assessment year "and so on". There is no limit on the number of years, which is the one respect in which section 73A is more generous than the ordinary eight-year rule for business losses in section 72. The section was inserted by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2009 with effect from 1 April 2010 — the same Act and the same date as section 35AD itself — so it governs AY 2010-11 onwards.

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.