What the courts have decided on section BMA s.84, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.
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Jyotsna Suri v DDIT (Inv.)
High CourtCuts both waysNo later treatment found
The officer has provisionally attached my property in a Black Money Act proceeding. Where does that power come from, and is s.3(2) under challenge?
The attachment was made under s.84 of the Black Money Act, which applies s.281B of the Income-tax Act to that Act. The Delhi High Court issued notice on a petition seeking to set aside proceedings under s.10 for assessment year 2021-22 and challenging the constitutional validity of s.3(2), gave the petitioner until 8 April 2025 to respond to the show cause notice, directed the officer to hear her and pass an order by 15 May 2025, and directed that any adverse order would not be given effect until the next hearing. Nothing was decided.
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Preetha Krishna v ACIT (Inv)
High CourtHelps taxpayerSuperseded by amendment
Days after the search they passed an order stopping me from leaving India without a tax clearance certificate. Can they do that, and does it even apply to a Black Money Act case?
On the text that can be read, the Madras High Court found the order under s.230(1A) indefensible at every point: it was passed one day after the search, on approval of the Director General of Income Tax (Investigation) and not of the Chief Commissioner as the provision requires, in language cut and pasted across five cases, and on no material showing that the assessee was a habitual offender, had criminal antecedents or was an assured flight risk. On the Black Money Act the Court recorded that s.84, which lists the Income-tax Act provisions carried into that Act, does not include s.230. The copy available stops before the formal disposal, so the order made on the writ petition is not stated here.
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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.
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CBDT instruction of 18 August 2025 on Black Money Act prosecutions
CBDT Circulars & InstructionsHelps taxpayer
The foreign asset is small and no penalty is proposed. Can they still prosecute me for leaving it out of Schedule FA?
Not on the Board's own instruction. It directs that prosecution under s.49 or s.50 of the Black Money Act is not to be initiated in cases where penalty under s.42 or s.43 is not imposed or not imposable because the asset falls within the proviso to those sections - assets other than immovable property whose aggregate value does not exceed Rs 20 lakh. It amends an earlier instruction of 15 March 2022.
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Section 84 of the Black Money Act - the Income-tax Act provisions applied
CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both waysNo later treatment found
Which provisions of the Income-tax Act apply to the Black Money Act, and can the officer borrow one that is not on the list?
Section 84 applies a closed list: clauses (c) and (d) of s.90(1), clauses (c) and (d) of s.90A(1), ss.119, 133, 134, 135 and 138, the whole of Chapter XV, and ss.237, 240, 245, 280, 280A, 280B, 280D, 281, 281B and 284 of the Income-tax Act, with necessary modifications, as if they referred to undisclosed foreign income and asset instead of to income-tax. The list is expressed as an enumeration and the decided points located in this area turn on what is left out of it. Sections 234A, 234B and 234C are not on it, which is why the Chennai Bench in Pascal Postel held that the interest charge in s.40(2) has no advance-tax machinery to operate on; s.230 is not on it either, which is the omission on which Preetha Krishna (Madras High Court) is understood to turn, though no copy of that judgment was opened for this note.
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.
