BMA s.10(3)

BMA s.10(3) — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section BMA s.10(3), in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• Chetan Satish Timblo v Union of India High CourtHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  Is the constitutional validity of the Black Money Act actually under challenge anywhere, and has anyone got a stay of an assessment under it?
  Yes, in the Bombay High Court. On 2 July 2026 the Court issued Rule on a petition challenging provisions of the Act as ultra vires the Constitution, stayed the assessment order dated 25 March 2023 passed under s.10(3) and the notice of demand of the same date issued under s.13, and restrained coercive action including prosecution and penalty until the hearing and final disposal. Nothing was decided on the merits.
• Prateek Chitkara v Union of India High CourtCuts both waysNo later treatment found
  There is a look-out circular against me while my Black Money Act appeal is pending. Can I get it lifted, and does the appeal need money deposited first?
  The look-out circular was not quashed but was converted into an intimation of arrival and departure under clause 6(I) of the Office Memorandum dated 22 February 2021, on conditions including security over property, the Court holding that this was not a case detrimental to the economic interest of the country as there was no allegation of siphoning of public funds and no criminal proceedings had been initiated despite the demand. On the appeal, the Court recorded that no amount had been deposited under Rule 6(4) of the Black Money Rules, which requires the tax with penalty and interest on the liability not objected to by the assessee to be paid before an appeal under s.15(1) is admitted.
• Shantanu Bhowmick v DDIT (Inv) ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  The department cannot produce the s.10(1) notice for the year it assessed. Is that cured by s.81?
  No. Where the Revenue could not produce any notice under s.10(1) for the assessment year in question, the Tribunal held that the absence of a valid notice for the relevant year is not a curable defect under s.81 of the Black Money Act. Both the assessment under s.10 and the consequent penalty order of Rs 1,84,11,360 were quashed.
• Sarvesh Naidu v DDIT (Inv) ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  My foreign life policy matured and the department has taxed the proceeds under the Black Money Act. Does s.10(10D) help when the insurer is foreign?
  Yes. The Tribunal held that s.10(10D) of the Income-tax Act draws no distinction between an Indian and a foreign insurer, and that where the premiums were paid out of income not chargeable to tax in India and out of income that had already suffered tax, the maturity proceeds of the policy could not be treated as undisclosed foreign income or an undisclosed foreign asset under the Black Money Act.
• Pascal Postel v DDIT (Inv.) ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  The officer has charged interest under s.40 of the Black Money Act on top of the tax. Is there any machinery for it, and can I still fight the quantum in the appeal against the rectification order?
  Interest under s.40(2) was held unworkable, because the advance-tax machinery on which ss.234B and 234C of the Income-tax Act operate is absent from the Black Money Act, so there is no statutory liability to pay advance tax on which the interest can bite. Interest under s.40(1) was held not to arise where the foreign source itself was disclosed, the expression 'not disclosed' meaning complete suppression of the source and not a difference in the quantum assessed. On the procedural point, where an assessment order under s.10 is altered by a rectification order under s.12, the two are read together as one composite order, so the appeal against the rectified order carries the underlying quantum with it.
• Bindu Todi v DDIT ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  My Black Money Act assessment was passed more than two years after the s.10 notice. The Department says the covid relaxation law extended the time. Did it?
  Not for the Black Money Act. Section 11(1) gives two years from the end of the financial year in which the s.10(1) notice was issued, and the Delhi Bench quashed an assessment passed outside that period. Notification No. 113/2021 dated 17 September 2021 issued under the Taxation and Other Laws (Relaxation and Amendment of Certain Provisions) Act 2020 extended time only for the Income-tax Act and the Prohibition of Benami Property Transactions Act, not for every specified Act, and did not extend the time for completing an assessment under the Black Money Act.
• Atanu Banerjee v DDIT (Investigation) ITATCuts both waysNo later treatment found
  I bought a house abroad years ago while I was a non-resident. Now that I have been resident in India, can it be taxed under the Black Money Act?
  The argument that acquisition while non-resident puts the asset outside the Act did not succeed before the Delhi Bench. The Tribunal proceeded on the basis that the assessee, being resident in India from assessment year 2016-17, was required to declare the foreign asset and explain its source, and that s.72(c) deems a pre-commencement asset in respect of which no declaration was made under Chapter VI to have been acquired in the year the s.10 notice was issued. It did not decide the appeal: it restored the matter to the Commissioner (Appeals) for fresh adjudication so that the assessee could produce evidence of the source of the investment and of his residential status.
• Krishore Kumar Rajagopal v DDIT ITATHelps taxpayer
  I left my foreign ESOPs out of Schedule FA. Is the Rs 10 lakh penalty automatic?
  No. Section 43 of the Black Money (Undisclosed Foreign Income and Assets) and Imposition of Tax Act 2015 says the officer 'may direct' a penalty, so the levy is discretionary. Where the ESOP perquisite had already suffered TDS and the capital gain on sale was offered to tax, the Tribunal treated the omission from Schedule FA as a technical breach and deleted the Rs 10 lakh penalty for each year.
• Sunil Kumar Alagh v DDIT (Inv) ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  The officer excluded the whole period he spent chasing a foreign tax authority. Does the exclusion start before the s.10(1) notice was served?
  No. The time excluded under Explanation 1(iii) to s.11 of the Black Money Act cannot include a period before the s.10(1) notice was served, because exclusion presupposes that the period was inside the limitation to begin with. On the facts the excludable period ran from service of the notice on 25 November 2020 to receipt of the last reply on 25 May 2021, being 182 days and not 195, which moved the last date for the assessment to 29 September 2023. The order passed on 30 September 2023 was one day late and was quashed.
• Ajay Kumar Patel v Addl. CIT ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  The s.10 notice does not say which year it relates to, and my foreign account was inherited and already put in a revised return. Can the assessment stand?
  No, on both counts. A notice under s.10(1) that omits the relevant financial year, coupled with delay in initiating the proceedings, goes to the root of jurisdiction, and s.81 of the Black Money Act, being in pari materia with s.292B of the Income-tax Act, protects only clerical or technical mistakes and not jurisdictional infirmities. Separately, an inherited foreign deposit whose source is explained and which was disclosed in revised returns and by a letter to the jurisdictional officer before the s.10(1) notice is not an undisclosed asset within s.2(11), and historic interest of earlier years cannot be charged under the Black Money Act at all.
• Chintan Navnitlal Parikh v PDIT (Inv) ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  I declared my interest in a foreign discretionary trust under s.59 and the assessment accepted it. Can the Principal Director now revise that order?
  Not where the point was examined at the assessment stage. The Tribunal set aside a revision under s.23 of the Black Money Act, holding that an order passed after due enquiry and verification is neither erroneous nor prejudicial to the interest of the Revenue within s.23(2) and cannot be called prejudicial under s.23(9). It also records the valuation route for a beneficiary's interest in a foreign trust: the trust's assets are valued as an association of persons under Rule 3(1)(g), with the shares held by the trust valued first under Rule 3(1)(c).
• Vijendra Kedia v DDIT (Inv) ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  The officer valued my foreign shareholding under the rule meant for bank accounts. Does that stand, and was I even an 'assessee' under the Act as a not ordinarily resident?
  Neither stands. Rule 3(1)(e) of the Black Money Rules determines the value of a bank account and cannot be applied to shares, which fall under Rule 3(1)(c). Separately, the definition of 'assessee' in s.2(2) as it stood when the s.10(1) notice was issued in February 2018 covered only a resident, and the assessee being not ordinarily resident in the relevant financial year, the notice and the assessment were held to be without jurisdiction and were quashed.
• Addl. CIT v Yashovardhan Birla ITATHelps taxpayerUnder appeal
  I am named as one of several beneficiaries of an offshore discretionary trust my uncle settled. Does that make the trust's assets my undisclosed foreign assets?
  No, on this line of orders. The Mumbai Bench dismissed the Revenue's appeal and upheld the setting aside of an assessment under s.10(3), following the coordinate Bench in the assessee's own case which had held the s.10(1) notice invalid. A discretionary trust gives a beneficiary no right to any part of the income but vests a discretionary power in the trustees, and where the trust was irrevocable, settled by another, and the assessee was one of several beneficiaries without control, ownership of the assets could not be thrust on him.
• Elangovan Malarmangai v JCIT ITATCuts both waysNo later treatment found
  The assessment under the Black Money Act has been quashed. Does the s.41 penalty go with it, and does the s.43 penalty go too?
  The s.41 penalty goes; the s.43 penalty does not. Because s.41 is a penalty on undisclosed foreign income and assets assessed under s.10, once the Tribunal deleted the additions on a legal ground the s.41 penalty of Rs 18,09,74,151 became infructuous and was directed to be deleted. The Rs 10,00,000 penalty under s.43 was separately upheld in the same order, because it turns on what was or was not put in the return and not on the assessment.
• Shiv Kumar Nayyar v Addl. CIT ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  Both a s.41 and a s.43 penalty have been levied on me under the Black Money Act for the same year. Are they attacked the same way?
  No. The s.41 penalty is arithmetic tied to the assessment, so where the addition is reduced in the quantum appeal the Tribunal simply sends the penalty back to be recomputed. The s.43 penalty is a separate levy needing its own foundation, and here it was quashed outright because the Assessing Officer had recorded satisfaction for assessment years 2012-13 to 2017-18 but not for the year in which the penalty was imposed.
• JCIT v Vikash Marda ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  They have issued notices under the Black Money Act for 2014-15 and 2015-16. Can the Act reach those years at all?
  No. The Kolkata Bench held that the first previous year under the Act is financial year 2015-16, so the first assessment year it can reach is 2016-17, and assessments framed for 2014-15 and 2015-16 were without jurisdiction. The batch is nine Revenue appeals covering both the assessments made under s.10(3) and the deletion of penalties levied under ss.41 and 43, and all nine were dismissed. On the asset, a fund in the United States built out of salary earned there while the assessee was a tax resident of the United States, and taxed there, was held not to fall within the definition of undisclosed asset under the Act.
• Statutory position — ss.41 and 43 of the Black Money Act and s.72(c): the penalty of three times the tax computed under s.10, the Rs 10 lakh penalty for not reporting a foreign asset in the return with its twenty lakh rupee proviso from 1 October 2024, and the deemed year of acquisition for an asset acquired before commencement CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  My client's Black Money assessment covers a foreign account opened in 2009 and not declared under the one-time compliance window. The department has charged tax and a penalty of three times the tax, and says the year is fixed by s.72(c). What do those provisions actually say?
  Section 41 provides that the Assessing Officer may direct that, in a case where tax has been computed under s.10 in respect of undisclosed foreign income and asset, the assessee shall pay by way of penalty, in addition to tax if any payable by him, "a sum equal to three times the tax computed under that section". It is therefore a multiple of the tax computed under s.10, and it follows the s.10 computation — if the computation goes, the base of the penalty goes with it. Section 43 is a different and smaller penalty: where a resident other than not ordinarily resident within s.6(6) of the Income-tax Act has furnished a return under s.139(1), (4) or (5) of that Act and fails to furnish any information, or furnishes inaccurate particulars, in that return relating to any asset (including financial interest in any entity) located outside India held by him as beneficial owner or otherwise, or in respect of which he was a beneficiary, or relating to any income from a source located outside India, the Assessing Officer "may direct that such person shall pay, by way of penalty, a sum of ten lakh rupees". Its proviso, as substituted by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 2024 with effect from 1 October 2024, reads: "Provided that this section shall not apply in respect of an asset or assets (other than immovable property), where the aggregate value of such asset or assets does not exceed twenty lakh rupees." The footnote on the departmental page records that before that substitution the proviso excluded only "an asset, being one or more bank accounts having an aggregate balance which does not exceed a value equivalent to five hundred thousand rupees at any time during the previous year". Section 72(c), in the removal-of-doubts provision at the end of the declaration chapter, is the hinge of the retrospectivity argument and reads: "where any asset has been acquired or made prior to commencement of this Act, and no declaration in respect of such asset is made under this Chapter, such asset shall be deemed to have been acquired or made in the year in which a notice under section 10 is issued by the Assessing Officer and the provisions of this Act shall apply accordingly".
• Statutory position — ss.10 and 11 of the Black Money Act: the s.10(1) notice, the enquiry, the s.10(3) assessment and the s.10(4) best judgment assessment, and the two-year limit in s.11 with the exclusions in Explanation 1 and the one-year cap on the exchange-of-information exclusion CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both waysValidity unconfirmed
  I have an assessment order under s.10(3) of the Black Money Act. The department says the limitation was extended because a request for exchange of information was pending. How long is the period, and how much can that request add to it?
  Two years, and the exchange-of-information exclusion is capped. Section 11(1) provides that no order of assessment or reassessment shall be made under s.10 after the expiry of two years from the end of the financial year in which the notice under s.10(1) was issued by the Assessing Officer. Explanation 1 to s.11 excludes, in computing that period, (i) the time taken in reopening the whole or any part of the proceeding, (ii) the period during which the assessment proceeding is stayed by an order or injunction of any court, and (iii) the period commencing from the date on which a reference or first of the references for exchange of information is made by an authority competent under an agreement referred to in s.90 or s.90A of the Income-tax Act or under s.73 of this Act and ending with the date on which the Principal Commissioner or the Commissioner last receives the information so requested "or a period of one year, whichever is less". The exclusion in clause (iii) therefore cannot add more than one year however long the request remains outstanding. A proviso to the Explanation extends the remaining period to sixty days where, after the exclusion, less than sixty days are left. On the machinery itself: s.10(1) empowers the Assessing Officer, on receipt of information from an income-tax authority or any other authority or on information coming to his notice, to serve a notice requiring production of accounts, documents or evidence on a date to be specified, and to serve further notices; s.10(2) allows him to make such enquiry as he considers necessary; s.10(3) requires him, after considering what he has obtained under s.10(1), what he has gathered under s.10(2) and any other evidence produced by the assessee, to assess or reassess by an order in writing and determine the sum payable; and s.10(4) provides that on a failure to comply with all the terms of the s.10(1) notice he shall, after taking into account all relevant material gathered and after giving the assessee an opportunity of being heard, make the assessment or reassessment to the best of his judgment and determine the sum payable.

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.