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Income-tax Act, 1961 · Chapter XA: General Anti-Avoidance Rule

Section 98: Consequences of impermissible avoidance arrangement

The Income-tax Act, 1961 was repealed by the Income-tax Act, 2025 from 1 April 2026.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

(1) If an arrangement is declared to be an impermissible avoidance arrangement, then, the consequences, in relation to tax, of the arrangement, including denial of tax benefit or a benefit under a tax treaty, shall be determined, in such manner as is deemed appropriate, in the circumstances of the case, including by way of but not limited to the following, namely:—

(a) disregarding, combining or recharacterising any step in, or a part or whole of, the impermissible avoidance arrangement;

(b) treating the impermissible avoidance arrangement as if it had not been entered into or carried out;

(c) disregarding any accommodating party or treating any accommodating party and any other party as one and the same person;

(d) deeming persons who are connected persons in relation to each other to be one and the same person for the purposes of determining tax treatment of any amount;

(e) reallocating amongst the parties to the arrangement—

(i) any accrual, or receipt, of a capital nature or revenue nature; or

(ii) any expenditure, deduction, relief or rebate;

(f) treating—

(i) the place of residence of any party to the arrangement; or

(ii) thesitus of an asset or of a transaction, at a place other than the place of residence, location of the asset or location of the transaction as provided under the arrangement; or

(g) considering or looking through any arrangement by disregarding any corporate structure.

(2) For the purposes of sub-section (1),—

(i) any equity may be treated as debt or vice versa;

(ii) any accrual, or receipt, of a capital nature may be treated as of revenue nature or vice versa; or

(iii) any expenditure, deduction, relief or rebate may be recharacterised.

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 98

No Supreme Court judgment in our database cites this section yet.