Definition: Persons, Assessees, Previous year, Assessment years, Financial year, Income, Gross Taxable Income, Taxable Income, Agricultural Income, Tax Evasion and Tax Avoidance

Anu earns a stipend from an internship between April 2024 and March 2025. She pays no tax that year, and then in the next year she is asked to file a return about it. Why is the tax year not the same as the year she earned the money? And if her father puts a family flat in a trust so that less of his rent is taxed, is that clever planning or a crime? This topic gives you the vocabulary to answer both.

In two minutes

Income-tax law works through a small set of defined terms: who is a person and an assessee, which year income is earned in (previous year) and which year it is taxed in (assessment year), what counts as income, how gross total income becomes taxable income, why agricultural income is set apart, and where lawful tax avoidance ends and unlawful evasion begins.

The rest of this chapter

The full explanation, the cheat sheet, every previous-year question at every mark weight, the quiz and the answer skeletons are part of Law of Taxation on LexBlox Semester. Sign in to unlock the subject, or read Module 1 of Legal Language and Writing free.