The Pune Bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal clarifies that cooperative societies can seek Section 80P deductions during assessment proceedings for 2015-16, reaffirming the prospective nature of the Section 80AC amendment introduced in 2018.
The Pune Bench of the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal has said a cooperative society can still seek a Section 80P deduction during assessment proceedings even when the claim was not made in the original income tax return, at least for assessment year 2015-16. The ruling turns on the timing of the law: the stricter filing requirement introduced in Section 80AC by the Finance Act 2018 applies only from assessment year 2018-19, according to the tribunal and the reporting summary of the case.
That meant the Revenue could not refuse the deduction simply because the return had not been filed on time, or because the relief had been omitted from the return itself. The tribunal treated the later Section 80AC amendment as prospective, not retrospective, and said a valid deduction does not vanish merely because it is first raised during assessment or on appeal in a pre-2018-19 year, according to the related case summaries and commentary.
The dispute also involved interest income earned from investments with cooperative banks and other cooperative societies. Pune ITAT has repeatedly taken the view that Section 80P(2)(d) can cover such receipts when the payer and recipient satisfy the statutory conditions, while distinguishing them from interest earned from other sources that do not qualify. One of the related summaries says the tribunal remanded part of the matter for proper working of the allowable deduction, showing that the nature of each income stream still matters.
The broader point for taxpayers is that tax litigation often turns on the assessment year involved. A rule that became mandatory from 1 April 2018 cannot be used to decide a dispute for 2015-16 or 2016-17, and earlier Pune rulings have echoed the same principle that procedural lapses should not defeat substantive eligibility where the law for that year did not impose the later bar.
For cooperative societies, the practical lesson is straightforward: an omitted Section 80P claim is not automatically lost in older cases, but eligibility still has to be proved income by income. The ruling is therefore useful mainly for pending disputes over pre-2018-19 years, while the amended Section 80AC continues to make timely return filing a real condition for later assessment years.
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