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Income-tax Act, 1961 · Chapter IV: Computation of Total Income · Heads of income

Section 14: Heads of income

The Income-tax Act, 1961 was repealed by the Income-tax Act, 2025 from 1 April 2026. The text is kept here because the judgments below apply it.

In plain words

All income is classified under the following heads for charging tax and computing total income: salaries, income from house property, profits and gains of business or profession, capital gains, and income from other sources.

  • Each head has its own rules of computation and deductions.
  • The heads are mutually exclusive; an item of income must be taxed under the correct head and not chosen freely.

A simplified explanation, prepared with AI assistance from the official text below and checked automatically against it for numbers and cross-references. The official text is the law and prevails over this summary. Not legal advice.

Official text

Save as otherwise provided by this Act, all income shall, for the purposes of charge of income-tax and computation of total income, be classified under the following heads of income:— A.—Salaries. * * * * * C.—Income from house property. D.—Profits and gains of business or profession. E.—Capital gains. F.—Income from other sources.

Source: India Code (Legislative Department), the text of the Act as it stood before its repeal. Words in square brackets [ ] were inserted or substituted by later amending Acts, and *** marks words omitted by an amendment. The amendment footnotes are not reproduced here. Official text on India Code.

Supreme Court judgments citing the section 14