Case Laws & Commentary · Income-tax Act, 1961 (as amended by the Finance Act, 2026) · bharattax.co Treatise
Provision: Live. Part A of Chapter XV (Legal representatives). Successor to section 24B of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922.
Subject: Liability of the legal representative of a deceased person to pay the deceased's tax, the machinery for assessing the deceased's income after death, and the ceiling of that liability (extent of the estate).
Finance Act, 2026: No change. Chapter XV is untouched by the Finance Act, 2026; the section stands as amended up to the Finance Act, 2025.
A. SECTION COMMENTARY
1. Scheme and purpose
Section 159 answers a problem that the charge under section 4 cannot solve by itself: a tax liability attaches to a person, but persons die while their liability is undischarged or even unascertained. The section creates a statutory continuity. By sub-section (1) the legal representative is made liable to pay any sum which the deceased would have been liable to pay had he not died, 'in the like manner and to the same extent as the deceased'. By sub-section (2) the assessment machinery is carried over — proceedings already taken against the deceased are deemed taken against the representative and continue from the stage reached at death; proceedings that could have been taken against the deceased may be taken against the representative; and all the provisions of the Act apply accordingly. By sub-section (3) the legal representative is deemed to be an assessee, and by sub-section (4) he is made personally liable to the extent he wastes the estate. Sub-sections (5) and (6) cap the liability at the value of the estate.
The section is the lineal successor of section 24B of the 1922 Act, and the long line of authority on section 24B continues to inform its construction. The governing idea is a legal fiction: the personality of the deceased is, for fiscal purposes, projected into the hands of the legal representative — but only so far as the fiction's purpose requires and no further.
2. The temporal limit of the fiction
The single most important limit is temporal. The fiction reaches the income of the deceased; it does not convert post-death receipts of the heirs into the deceased's income. In CIT v. Amarchand N. Shroff the Supreme Court held that the fiction operates only for the previous year in which the death occurs and the income that the deceased would have been assessed on — it cannot be stretched to tax, in the representative's hands, professional or other receipts that come in to the heirs in assessment years after the year of death. Where post-death estate income arises, the charge (if any) is on the executor under section 168, not on the legal representative under section 159.
3. 'Like manner and to the same extent'; what 'any sum' includes
The representative steps into the deceased's shoes: he can raise every contention the deceased could have raised, and is exposed to the same heads of liability. 'Any sum which the deceased would have been liable to pay' is wide enough to take in not merely tax but interest and, where the default occurred in the deceased's lifetime, penalty — subject always to the estate ceiling in sub-sections (4) and (6). The representative's personal exposure under sub-section (4) is confined to the value of assets of the estate that he charges, disposes of or parts with while the tax liability remains undischarged.
4. Who is 'the' legal representative; bringing all heirs on record
'Legal representative' bears the meaning assigned by the Code of Civil Procedure (a person who in law represents the estate of the deceased), and the question of who that is can itself be a live, fact-dependent issue where there are several heirs or executors. Where there are multiple legal representatives, the proper course is to bring all who represent the estate on record; failure to do so raises a question — examined in the authorities below — whether the resulting assessment is merely irregular (and curable) or a nullity.
5. Defective proceedings: irregular or void? The notice-to-a-dead-person line
Two streams of authority must be read together. The older stream (Jai Prakash Singh) treats an omission to serve, or a defect in service of, notice on all the legal representatives as an irregularity that does not efface the substantive liability — especially where a representative participates without objection. The modern stream, developed mainly in writ jurisdiction from 2018 onwards (Savita Kapila; Alamelu Veerappan; Rajender Kumar Sehgal; Chandreshbhai Patel; Bhupendra Bhikhalal Desai), holds that a reassessment notice issued in the name of a person already dead is a nullity that section 292B cannot cure, and that section 159 can be invoked to proceed against the legal representative only where the proceeding was validly initiated against the assessee in his lifetime. The reconciling principle is one of initiation versus continuation: section 159(2)(a) continues a validly-begun proceeding; it does not validate a proceeding begun against a dead person. The participation/objection distinction (Chandreshbhai Patel) marks the practical dividing line — a representative who merely informs the officer of the death and asks that the matter be dropped does not 'participate' so as to attract the cure in section 292BB.
6. Practice points
For the Revenue: verify the assessee is alive before issuing a section 148/142(1) notice; on learning of a death, drop the notice issued to the deceased and issue a fresh, valid notice to the legal representative within limitation. For the assessee's side: a notice first issued to a dead person is, on the prevailing High Court view, void and not saved by participation where the representative objects; the estate ceiling in sub-sections (4) and (6) should be pleaded to confine recovery to the value of the estate.
B. STATUTORY POSITION (verbatim text)
The text of the section, as it stands in the Act (FA-2025 base), is set out below.
159. (1) Where a person dies, his legal representative shall be liable to pay any sum which the deceased would have been liable to pay if he had not died, in the like manner and to the same extent as the deceased.
(2) For the purpose of making an assessment (including an assessment, reassessment or recomputation under section 147) of the income of the deceased and for the purpose of levying any sum in the hands of the legal representative in accordance with the provisions of sub-section (1),—
(a) any proceeding taken against the deceased before his death shall be deemed to have been taken against the legal representative and may be continued against the legal representative from the stage at which it stood on the date of the death of the deceased;
(b) any proceeding which could have been taken against the deceased if he had survived, may be taken against the legal representative; and
(c) all the provisions of this Act shall apply accordingly.
(3) The legal representative of the deceased shall, for the purposes of this Act, be deemed to be an assessee.
(4) Every legal representative shall be personally liable for any tax payable by him in his capacity as legal representative if, while his liability for tax remains undischarged, he creates a charge on or disposes of or parts with any assets of the estate of the deceased, which are in, or may come into, his possession, but such liability shall be limited to the value of the asset so charged, disposed of or parted with.
(5) The provisions of sub-section (2) of section 161, section 162, and section 167, shall, so far as may be and to the extent to which they are not inconsistent with the provisions of this section, apply in relation to a legal representative.
(6) The liability of a legal representative under this section shall, subject to the provisions of sub-section (4) and sub-section (5), be limited to the extent to which the estate is capable of meeting the liability.
C. AUTHORITIES
Section 159 is richly litigated in two eras: the foundational 1922-Act / section 24B line on the legal fiction, and a heavy modern High-Court line (2018 onwards) on reassessment notices issued in the name of a dead person. All citations below are web-verified; the two unverifiable leads on penalty against legal representatives ("Kalawati Devi", "Tapati Pal") have been deliberately omitted.
Cluster A — The legal fiction: what income, to what extent, for which year
CIT, Bombay City I v. Amarchand N. Shroff (by his heirs)
Citation: (1963) 48 ITR 59 (SC)
Facts: Professional receipts of a deceased solicitor came in to his heirs in assessment years after the year of his death; the Revenue sought to tax them by extending the section 24B fiction.
Held: The fiction in section 24B (now section 159) extends the deceased's personality only for the previous year in which he died and the income he would have been assessed on; it cannot be stretched to tax post-death receipts of the heirs in succeeding assessment years.
Relevance: The foundational authority on the temporal limit of the section 159 fiction; fixes the boundary between section 159 (income up to death) and section 168 (post-death estate income).
CIT v. James Anderson
Citation: (1964) 51 ITR 345 (SC)
Facts: Executor/administrator of a deceased registered shareholder; whether dividends/capital gains were assessable in the representative's hands and on what footing.
Held: Tax on the income of the deceased can be levied on the executor/administrator/legal representative only to the extent, and in the manner, the deceased could have been taxed; the representative is assessable in a representative capacity, the fiction being confined to income the deceased would have borne.
Relevance: Reinforces the 'like manner and to the same extent' principle now in section 159(1); read with Amarchand Shroff on the limits of the fiction.
Cluster B — Who is the legal representative; representation of the estate
First Additional ITO v. Mrs. Suseela Sadanandan
Citation: (1965) 57 ITR 168 (SC)
Facts: Reassessment of a deceased where there were several legal representatives (widow, son, executors) but the proceedings ran against only some of them.
Held: Where there are several legal representatives, whether an assessment made on some only (without the others on record) is valid depends on the facts; who the legal representatives are, and whether all were properly before the officer, is a live jurisdictional question. The matter was remitted for that determination.
Relevance: Leading authority on the consequence of failing to bring all legal representatives on record under section 159(2)(b).
Kapurchand Shrimal v. CIT
Citation: (1981) 131 ITR 451 (SC)
Facts: Continuation of an assessment where a mandatory step had not been complied with; question whether the appellate authority should annul or set aside and remit.
Held: An assessment made without complying with a mandatory step is not to be simply ignored as a nullity; the appellate authority's duty is to set it aside and have it remade in conformity with law, not merely to annul. (Distinct from the 1969 Kapurchand Shrimal v. TRO, 72 ITR 623 (SC), a recovery matter — the two must not be conflated.)
Relevance: Cited on the irregular-versus-void distinction for defective representative-capacity assessments.
Cluster C — Defect in proceedings: irregular, not void, where the representative participates
CIT v. Jai Prakash Singh
Citation: (1996) 219 ITR 737 (SC)
Facts: Assessment on a deceased's income where notices were not served on all the legal heirs, but the proceedings were carried forward and a representative participated.
Held: Omission to serve, or a defect in service of, notice on all the legal representatives does not efface the substantive liability to tax; such a defect renders the assessment irregular (curable), not null and void, particularly where a legal representative participated without objection.
Relevance: The leading 'irregular not void' authority under section 159; the counterweight to the modern dead-person-notice line, turning on participation.
Cluster D — Modern High-Court line: a reassessment notice issued in the name of a dead person is a nullity
Facts: A section 148 notice was issued in the name of an assessee who had already died; the legal heir had not intimated the death or cancelled the PAN.
Held: A notice issued in the name of a dead person is unenforceable; there is no statutory obligation on legal representatives to intimate the death or cancel the PAN; section 159 can be invoked only if the proceeding was initiated while the assessee was alive; non-intimation does not extend limitation. Notice quashed.
Relevance: Lead Madras authority on the limits of section 159(2)(b) and the inapplicability of section 292B to a dead-person notice.
Savita Kapila (LR of late Mohinder Paul Kapila) v. ACIT
Facts: A section 148 notice was issued in the name of the deceased after his death; one of four legal heirs challenged it.
Held: Section 159 applies only where a proceeding was initiated against the assessee while alive and is then continued against the legal representative — not where the notice itself is first issued to a dead person; section 292BB applies to an assessee, not to a legal representative, and cannot cure a dead-person notice. Proceedings quashed.
Relevance: The most-cited modern statement of the scope of section 159 vis-à-vis dead-person reassessment notices.
Rajender Kumar Sehgal v. ITO
Citation: (2019) 414 ITR 286 (Del)
Facts: Section 148 and 142(1) notices were issued in the name of a deceased taxpayer; the legal representative objected and sought dropping of the proceedings.
Held: Section 159 permits proceeding against the legal representative only where the reassessment notice was issued during the taxpayer's lifetime; a reopening notice issued in the name of a deceased person is null and void.
Relevance: Reinforces the lifetime-initiation requirement of section 159; cited alongside Savita Kapila.
Facts: Section 148 notice on a deceased; the legal heir wrote to the officer informing of the death and asking that the proceedings be dropped.
Held: Merely informing the officer of the death and asking to drop the proceedings is not 'participation'; section 292B does not save a notice issued to a dead person where the legal representative objects; the notice is invalid.
Citation: Gujarat HC; SLP at (2021) 131 taxmann.com 40 (SC)
Facts: A notice initiating assessment/reassessment was issued against a deceased person; the Gujarat High Court held it a nullity and the Revenue carried the matter to the Supreme Court.
Held: A notice issued for initiating assessment/reassessment against a deceased person is a nullity; once death is intimated, further proceedings in the deceased's name are non est, and section 159(2)(b) requires the legal representative to be proceeded against.
Relevance: Apex-court-level endorsement (at SLP stage) of the dead-person-notice line; the precise effect of the SLP order should be checked before citing it as binding ratio.
Compiled for the bharattax.co Treatise on the Income-tax Act, 1961 (as amended by the Finance Act, 2026). Statutory text is reproduced from the Income-tax Act, 1961 (text as printed in the local Act, base text amended up to the Finance Act, 2025), with the publisher's footnote apparatus and amendment-marker brackets removed; three asterisks (***) denote words or a provision omitted by amendment and retained only to mark the omission. The Finance Act, 2026 amends no section of Chapter XV of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (its Part-A amendments touch ss.92CA, 139, 140B, 144B, 144C, 147A, 148, 150, 153, 153B, 220, 222, 234, 245, 245MA, 254 and 270A-276 only). Citations are stated as reported; orders of the Tribunal and High Courts are flagged as such. Where a section has not been judicially construed, that is stated candidly and the nearest governing authority is given. This material is for professional reference and is not legal advice.
CHAPTER XV — LIABILITY IN SPECIAL CASES
Section 159 — Legal Representatives
Case Laws & Commentary · Income-tax Act, 1961 (as amended by the Finance Act, 2026) · bharattax.co Treatise
Provision: Live. Part A of Chapter XV (Legal representatives). Successor to section 24B of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922.
Subject: Liability of the legal representative of a deceased person to pay the deceased's tax, the machinery for assessing the deceased's income after death, and the ceiling of that liability (extent of the estate).
Finance Act, 2026: No change. Chapter XV is untouched by the Finance Act, 2026; the section stands as amended up to the Finance Act, 2025.
A. SECTION COMMENTARY
1. Scheme and purpose
Section 159 answers a problem that the charge under section 4 cannot solve by itself: a tax liability attaches to a person, but persons die while their liability is undischarged or even unascertained. The section creates a statutory continuity. By sub-section (1) the legal representative is made liable to pay any sum which the deceased would have been liable to pay had he not died, 'in the like manner and to the same extent as the deceased'. By sub-section (2) the assessment machinery is carried over — proceedings already taken against the deceased are deemed taken against the representative and continue from the stage reached at death; proceedings that could have been taken against the deceased may be taken against the representative; and all the provisions of the Act apply accordingly. By sub-section (3) the legal representative is deemed to be an assessee, and by sub-section (4) he is made personally liable to the extent he wastes the estate. Sub-sections (5) and (6) cap the liability at the value of the estate.
The section is the lineal successor of section 24B of the 1922 Act, and the long line of authority on section 24B continues to inform its construction. The governing idea is a legal fiction: the personality of the deceased is, for fiscal purposes, projected into the hands of the legal representative — but only so far as the fiction's purpose requires and no further.
2. The temporal limit of the fiction
The single most important limit is temporal. The fiction reaches the income of the deceased; it does not convert post-death receipts of the heirs into the deceased's income. In CIT v. Amarchand N. Shroff the Supreme Court held that the fiction operates only for the previous year in which the death occurs and the income that the deceased would have been assessed on — it cannot be stretched to tax, in the representative's hands, professional or other receipts that come in to the heirs in assessment years after the year of death. Where post-death estate income arises, the charge (if any) is on the executor under section 168, not on the legal representative under section 159.
3. 'Like manner and to the same extent'; what 'any sum' includes
The representative steps into the deceased's shoes: he can raise every contention the deceased could have raised, and is exposed to the same heads of liability. 'Any sum which the deceased would have been liable to pay' is wide enough to take in not merely tax but interest and, where the default occurred in the deceased's lifetime, penalty — subject always to the estate ceiling in sub-sections (4) and (6). The representative's personal exposure under sub-section (4) is confined to the value of assets of the estate that he charges, disposes of or parts with while the tax liability remains undischarged.
4. Who is 'the' legal representative; bringing all heirs on record
'Legal representative' bears the meaning assigned by the Code of Civil Procedure (a person who in law represents the estate of the deceased), and the question of who that is can itself be a live, fact-dependent issue where there are several heirs or executors. Where there are multiple legal representatives, the proper course is to bring all who represent the estate on record; failure to do so raises a question — examined in the authorities below — whether the resulting assessment is merely irregular (and curable) or a nullity.
5. Defective proceedings: irregular or void? The notice-to-a-dead-person line
Two streams of authority must be read together. The older stream (Jai Prakash Singh) treats an omission to serve, or a defect in service of, notice on all the legal representatives as an irregularity that does not efface the substantive liability — especially where a representative participates without objection. The modern stream, developed mainly in writ jurisdiction from 2018 onwards (Savita Kapila; Alamelu Veerappan; Rajender Kumar Sehgal; Chandreshbhai Patel; Bhupendra Bhikhalal Desai), holds that a reassessment notice issued in the name of a person already dead is a nullity that section 292B cannot cure, and that section 159 can be invoked to proceed against the legal representative only where the proceeding was validly initiated against the assessee in his lifetime. The reconciling principle is one of initiation versus continuation: section 159(2)(a) continues a validly-begun proceeding; it does not validate a proceeding begun against a dead person. The participation/objection distinction (Chandreshbhai Patel) marks the practical dividing line — a representative who merely informs the officer of the death and asks that the matter be dropped does not 'participate' so as to attract the cure in section 292BB.
6. Practice points
For the Revenue: verify the assessee is alive before issuing a section 148/142(1) notice; on learning of a death, drop the notice issued to the deceased and issue a fresh, valid notice to the legal representative within limitation. For the assessee's side: a notice first issued to a dead person is, on the prevailing High Court view, void and not saved by participation where the representative objects; the estate ceiling in sub-sections (4) and (6) should be pleaded to confine recovery to the value of the estate.
B. STATUTORY POSITION (verbatim text)
The text of the section, as it stands in the Act (FA-2025 base), is set out below.
159. (1) Where a person dies, his legal representative shall be liable to pay any sum which the deceased would have been liable to pay if he had not died, in the like manner and to the same extent as the deceased.
(2) For the purpose of making an assessment (including an assessment, reassessment or recomputation under section 147) of the income of the deceased and for the purpose of levying any sum in the hands of the legal representative in accordance with the provisions of sub-section (1),—
(a) any proceeding taken against the deceased before his death shall be deemed to have been taken against the legal representative and may be continued against the legal representative from the stage at which it stood on the date of the death of the deceased;
(b) any proceeding which could have been taken against the deceased if he had survived, may be taken against the legal representative; and
(c) all the provisions of this Act shall apply accordingly.
(3) The legal representative of the deceased shall, for the purposes of this Act, be deemed to be an assessee.
(4) Every legal representative shall be personally liable for any tax payable by him in his capacity as legal representative if, while his liability for tax remains undischarged, he creates a charge on or disposes of or parts with any assets of the estate of the deceased, which are in, or may come into, his possession, but such liability shall be limited to the value of the asset so charged, disposed of or parted with.
(5) The provisions of sub-section (2) of section 161, section 162, and section 167, shall, so far as may be and to the extent to which they are not inconsistent with the provisions of this section, apply in relation to a legal representative.
(6) The liability of a legal representative under this section shall, subject to the provisions of sub-section (4) and sub-section (5), be limited to the extent to which the estate is capable of meeting the liability.
C. AUTHORITIES
Section 159 is richly litigated in two eras: the foundational 1922-Act / section 24B line on the legal fiction, and a heavy modern High-Court line (2018 onwards) on reassessment notices issued in the name of a dead person. All citations below are web-verified; the two unverifiable leads on penalty against legal representatives ("Kalawati Devi", "Tapati Pal") have been deliberately omitted.
Cluster A — The legal fiction: what income, to what extent, for which year
CIT, Bombay City I v. Amarchand N. Shroff (by his heirs)
Citation: (1963) 48 ITR 59 (SC)
Facts: Professional receipts of a deceased solicitor came in to his heirs in assessment years after the year of his death; the Revenue sought to tax them by extending the section 24B fiction.
Held: The fiction in section 24B (now section 159) extends the deceased's personality only for the previous year in which he died and the income he would have been assessed on; it cannot be stretched to tax post-death receipts of the heirs in succeeding assessment years.
Relevance: The foundational authority on the temporal limit of the section 159 fiction; fixes the boundary between section 159 (income up to death) and section 168 (post-death estate income).
CIT v. James Anderson
Citation: (1964) 51 ITR 345 (SC)
Facts: Executor/administrator of a deceased registered shareholder; whether dividends/capital gains were assessable in the representative's hands and on what footing.
Held: Tax on the income of the deceased can be levied on the executor/administrator/legal representative only to the extent, and in the manner, the deceased could have been taxed; the representative is assessable in a representative capacity, the fiction being confined to income the deceased would have borne.
Relevance: Reinforces the 'like manner and to the same extent' principle now in section 159(1); read with Amarchand Shroff on the limits of the fiction.
Cluster B — Who is the legal representative; representation of the estate
First Additional ITO v. Mrs. Suseela Sadanandan
Citation: (1965) 57 ITR 168 (SC)
Facts: Reassessment of a deceased where there were several legal representatives (widow, son, executors) but the proceedings ran against only some of them.
Held: Where there are several legal representatives, whether an assessment made on some only (without the others on record) is valid depends on the facts; who the legal representatives are, and whether all were properly before the officer, is a live jurisdictional question. The matter was remitted for that determination.
Relevance: Leading authority on the consequence of failing to bring all legal representatives on record under section 159(2)(b).
Kapurchand Shrimal v. CIT
Citation: (1981) 131 ITR 451 (SC)
Facts: Continuation of an assessment where a mandatory step had not been complied with; question whether the appellate authority should annul or set aside and remit.
Held: An assessment made without complying with a mandatory step is not to be simply ignored as a nullity; the appellate authority's duty is to set it aside and have it remade in conformity with law, not merely to annul. (Distinct from the 1969 Kapurchand Shrimal v. TRO, 72 ITR 623 (SC), a recovery matter — the two must not be conflated.)
Relevance: Cited on the irregular-versus-void distinction for defective representative-capacity assessments.
Cluster C — Defect in proceedings: irregular, not void, where the representative participates
CIT v. Jai Prakash Singh
Citation: (1996) 219 ITR 737 (SC)
Facts: Assessment on a deceased's income where notices were not served on all the legal heirs, but the proceedings were carried forward and a representative participated.
Held: Omission to serve, or a defect in service of, notice on all the legal representatives does not efface the substantive liability to tax; such a defect renders the assessment irregular (curable), not null and void, particularly where a legal representative participated without objection.
Relevance: The leading 'irregular not void' authority under section 159; the counterweight to the modern dead-person-notice line, turning on participation.
Cluster D — Modern High-Court line: a reassessment notice issued in the name of a dead person is a nullity
Alamelu Veerappan v. ITO
Citation: (2018) 257 Taxman 72 / 304 CTR 512 (Mad)
Facts: A section 148 notice was issued in the name of an assessee who had already died; the legal heir had not intimated the death or cancelled the PAN.
Held: A notice issued in the name of a dead person is unenforceable; there is no statutory obligation on legal representatives to intimate the death or cancel the PAN; section 159 can be invoked only if the proceeding was initiated while the assessee was alive; non-intimation does not extend limitation. Notice quashed.
Relevance: Lead Madras authority on the limits of section 159(2)(b) and the inapplicability of section 292B to a dead-person notice.
Savita Kapila (LR of late Mohinder Paul Kapila) v. ACIT
Citation: (2020) 426 ITR 502 / 273 Taxman 148 (Del)
Facts: A section 148 notice was issued in the name of the deceased after his death; one of four legal heirs challenged it.
Held: Section 159 applies only where a proceeding was initiated against the assessee while alive and is then continued against the legal representative — not where the notice itself is first issued to a dead person; section 292BB applies to an assessee, not to a legal representative, and cannot cure a dead-person notice. Proceedings quashed.
Relevance: The most-cited modern statement of the scope of section 159 vis-à-vis dead-person reassessment notices.
Rajender Kumar Sehgal v. ITO
Citation: (2019) 414 ITR 286 (Del)
Facts: Section 148 and 142(1) notices were issued in the name of a deceased taxpayer; the legal representative objected and sought dropping of the proceedings.
Held: Section 159 permits proceeding against the legal representative only where the reassessment notice was issued during the taxpayer's lifetime; a reopening notice issued in the name of a deceased person is null and void.
Relevance: Reinforces the lifetime-initiation requirement of section 159; cited alongside Savita Kapila.
Chandreshbhai Jayantibhai Patel v. ITO
Citation: (2019) 413 ITR 276 / 261 Taxman 137 (Guj)
Facts: Section 148 notice on a deceased; the legal heir wrote to the officer informing of the death and asking that the proceedings be dropped.
Held: Merely informing the officer of the death and asking to drop the proceedings is not 'participation'; section 292B does not save a notice issued to a dead person where the legal representative objects; the notice is invalid.
Relevance: Draws the participation/objection line under section 159 and section 292B.
ITO v. Bhupendra Bhikhalal Desai
Citation: Gujarat HC; SLP at (2021) 131 taxmann.com 40 (SC)
Facts: A notice initiating assessment/reassessment was issued against a deceased person; the Gujarat High Court held it a nullity and the Revenue carried the matter to the Supreme Court.
Held: A notice issued for initiating assessment/reassessment against a deceased person is a nullity; once death is intimated, further proceedings in the deceased's name are non est, and section 159(2)(b) requires the legal representative to be proceeded against.
Relevance: Apex-court-level endorsement (at SLP stage) of the dead-person-notice line; the precise effect of the SLP order should be checked before citing it as binding ratio.
Compiled for the bharattax.co Treatise on the Income-tax Act, 1961 (as amended by the Finance Act, 2026). Statutory text is reproduced from the Income-tax Act, 1961 (text as printed in the local Act, base text amended up to the Finance Act, 2025), with the publisher's footnote apparatus and amendment-marker brackets removed; three asterisks (***) denote words or a provision omitted by amendment and retained only to mark the omission. The Finance Act, 2026 amends no section of Chapter XV of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (its Part-A amendments touch ss.92CA, 139, 140B, 144B, 144C, 147A, 148, 150, 153, 153B, 220, 222, 234, 245, 245MA, 254 and 270A-276 only). Citations are stated as reported; orders of the Tribunal and High Courts are flagged as such. Where a section has not been judicially construed, that is stated candidly and the nearest governing authority is given. This material is for professional reference and is not legal advice.