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Income-tax Act, 1961 · Chapter II: Basis of Charge

Section 8: Dividend income

The Income-tax Act, 1961 was repealed by the Income-tax Act, 2025 from 1 April 2026.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

A dividend is treated as income of the previous year in which it is declared, distributed or paid. An interim dividend is income of the year in which the company unconditionally makes it available to the member.

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

[For the purposes of inclusion in the total income of an assessee,—

(a) any dividend] declared by a company or distributed or paid by it within the meaning of sub-clause (a) or sub-clause (b) or sub-clause (c) or sub-clause (d) or sub-clause (e) of clause (22) of section 2 shall be deemed to be the income of the previous year in which it is so declared, distributed or paid, as the case may be; [(b) any interim dividend shall be deemed to be the income of the previous year in which the amount of such dividend is unconditionally made available by the company to the member who is entitled to it.]

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 8