Section 80GGC

Section 80GGC — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 80GGC, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Public Political Party v Deputy Commissioner of Income Tax High CourtHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  My client's s.80GGC deduction has been disallowed because the recipient party is alleged to be an entry provider. Has any High Court decided what the party's own position is, and does that finding bind my client?
  Yes as to the party, no as to your client. The Delhi High Court dismissed the party's own appeals, holding that the Tribunal's finding that it issued bogus donation receipts to enable donors to claim deductions under s.80GGB and s.80GGC, and paid the money back to the persons from whom it was purportedly received, is a finding of fact not open to interference under s.260A. The party also lost its s.13A exemption for failing to file the report required by the second proviso to s.13A. The Court decided nothing about any identified donor: the finding is that this party issued bogus receipts and paid the money back, not that any particular donor received a refund.
• Shailendra Kumar Agarwal v Income Tax Officer, Ward 1, Rourkela High CourtCuts both waysNo later treatment found
  Can I go to the writ court against a s.148A(b) notice that simply asserts my s.80GGC claim is bogus, when the deduction was already examined in the completed assessment?
  The Orissa High Court entertained exactly that writ petition and stayed the notice. It required the Revenue to be heard on how a claim for deduction that had been made and assessed, being a donation to a registered unrecognised political party, could be said to have escaped assessment, and the petitioner argued change of opinion on the authority of CIT v Kelvinator of India Ltd. This is an interlocutory order: it decides nothing and contains no holding.
• Manoj Kumar Jagetia v ITO ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  My s.80GGC donation has been disallowed and the same money added back under s.69A, purely because the Investigation Wing says the party ran a cash-back racket. Nothing in the order names me. Can that stand?
  No. A general modus operandi found in a search of the recipient political party may justify opening an enquiry, but it cannot by itself prove that this donor got his money back; the Revenue must produce assessee-specific material and must confront the donor with it. The Tribunal restored the full Rs.3,00,000 deduction under s.80GGC and deleted the consequential Rs.2,85,000 addition under s.69A.
• Sumit Maloo v ITO, Kishangarh ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  The Assessing Officer has disallowed my whole Chapter VI-A block — 80C, 80D, 80G — and my HRA, saying I filed no documentary evidence. I did file it. What do I do?
  The Jaipur Tribunal restored almost all of it, holding that where the assessee has actually placed the evidence on record the Assessing Officer and the CIT(A) cannot disallow "arbitrarily" without discussing those documents. On s.80D in particular the Tribunal allowed Rs 50,000 of medical expenditure incurred on a dependent father who was a senior citizen suffering from Parkinson's, on the strength of a doctor's prescription, the father's Aadhaar showing his age, and bank entries evidencing the spend — with no insurance policy at all.
• Meetkumar Hasmukhbhai Chaturvedi v ITO ITATHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  I paid the political party by cheque and I hold the receipt. Is that enough to save my s.80GGC deduction when the department says the party was running an accommodation-entry racket?
  Not on this record. The Tribunal dismissed the appeal, holding that payment through banking channels and production of a donation receipt cannot override the search material showing that the recipient party systematically layered donations through shell entities and returned the cash. It also rejected the challenge to the s.148 notice.
• Mayur Bhararbhai Popat v ITO ITATHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  I applied for immunity under s.270AA after paying the tax on the s.80GGC disallowance. The Assessing Officer refused it because he had charged misreporting. Was he entitled to?
  Yes, on the law as it stood for AY 2019-20 and down to 28 February 2026. Section 270AA(3) then granted immunity only where penalty proceedings under s.270A had NOT been initiated in the circumstances in s.270A(9), so once the Assessing Officer invoked s.270A(9) the statute itself excluded immunity and the 200 per cent penalty under s.270A(8) followed. That bar no longer exists: clause 21 of the Finance Act 2026 substituted s.270AA(1) to (3) with effect from 1 March 2026, and immunity, or waiver of a penalty already levied, is now available on a s.270A(9) charge on payment of additional income-tax of one hundred per cent of the tax on the under-reported income, in lieu of the penalty. A second qualification belongs to the old law and still governs any year decided on it: where the invocation of s.270A(9) is a bare label with no clause identified and no reasoning on its ingredients, the Delhi High Court in Prem Brothers Infrastructure LLP v NFAC (W.P.(C) 7092/2022, 31 May 2022) quashed the penalty and directed immunity to be granted — so the battleground is the quality of the initiation, not the availability of s.270AA in the abstract.
• Arun Pratap Singh v ITO, New Delhi ITATHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  The Assessing Officer has disallowed my s.80GGC deduction and, on top of that, added five per cent of the donation under s.69C read with s.115BBE as commission I am presumed to have paid. Will the Tribunal delete at least the commission?
  Not necessarily. The Delhi Bench dismissed the appeal in its entirety, holding that where a search under s.132 on the recipient party produced sworn statements of the President and key office bearers admitting that donations received through banking channels were returned to donors in cash after deducting commission, the payment through NEFT and a valid donation receipt do not save the deduction. The order does not separately deal with the s.69C addition; it upholds the impugned order as a whole.
• Abhishek Rajeshbhai Karia v ITO, Ahmedabad ITATCuts both waysNo later treatment found
  My s.148 reassessment started over a political donation but the Assessing Officer has disallowed my 80D and 80DDB for my parents' medical expenses as well. Are those safe?
  On this order the s.80D claim of Rs 75,000 for health insurance premium and medical expenditure incurred for the assessee's parents was allowed outright, the Tribunal holding the disallowance unjustified because the expenditure was incurred for his parents and is deductible under s.80D. The s.80DDB claim of Rs 87,000 for a father diagnosed with cancer was NOT allowed: it went back to the Assessing Officer because eleven documents called for had never been produced either before him or before the CIT(A).
• Niket Maheshbhai Shah v ITO ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  I gave up the fight on the s.80GGC disallowance and paid the tax. Now there is a 200 per cent penalty under s.270A for misreporting. Can I still resist the penalty?
  Yes. The Tribunal quashed the penalty outright. Claiming a deduction the assessee genuinely believed was available is not under-reporting or misreporting, and where the penalty order does not say which limb of s.270A(9) is attracted or how its ingredients are satisfied, the order is arbitrary and cannot stand.
• ACIT, Circle-1(1), Bilaspur v Anuj Prakash Gupta ITATHelps taxpayerUnder appeal
  The Assessing Officer disallowed my s.80GGC deduction purely because the political party was named in a search on registered unrecognised political parties. He has no evidence that I got anything back. Is that enough to sustain the disallowance?
  No. The Commissioner (Appeals) deleted the disallowance and the Tribunal upheld the deletion, holding that a disallowance in the hands of each donor requires primary evidence establishing that the particular transaction was not genuine — a bank trail, a statement or a confirmation linking that donor to the refund. General findings from a search in third-party cases, without confrontation or cross-examination, will not do.
• ACIT v Armee Infotech ITATHelps taxpayer
  The Assessing Officer says my s.80GGC deduction fails because he cannot trace what the party did with the money, and because the party did not file its return. Does the section require me to answer for that?
  No. Section 80GGC requires a contribution, otherwise than in cash, to a political party registered under s.29A of the Representation of the People Act 1951, by an assessee who is not a local authority or a Government-funded artificial juridical person. Nothing in the Act puts the donor under an obligation to ensure how the donee uses the funds, and an enquiry directed at that is misdirected.

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.