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Income-tax Act, 1961 · Chapter VI: Aggregation of Income and Set Off or Carry Forward of Loss · Aggregation of income

Section 69A: Unexplained money, etc

The Income-tax Act, 1961 was repealed by the Income-tax Act, 2025 from 1 April 2026.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

If the assessee is found to own money, bullion, jewellery or other valuables not recorded in their books, and gives no satisfactory explanation of where they came from, their value may be treated as the assessee's income for that financial year.

  • The burden is on the assessee to explain the nature and source of the asset.
  • If the explanation is accepted, no addition is made under this section.
  • The Assessing Officer's opinion that the explanation is not satisfactory must be reasonable and based on the material.

Example: Cash found during a search that is not in the books and cannot be explained may be added to income under this section.

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

Where in any financial year the assessee is found to be the owner of any money, bullion, jewellery or other valuable article and such money, bullion, jewellery or valuable article is not recorded in the books of account, if any, maintained by him for any source of income, and

the assessee offers no explanation about the nature and source of acquisition of the money, bullion, jewellery or other valuable article, or the explanation offered by him is not, in the opinion of the [Assessing Officer], satisfactory, the money and the value of the bullion,jewellery or other valuable article may be deemed to be the income of the assessee for such financial year.]

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 69A