s.292BB — When a notice is deemed to have been served
The deeming that stops an assessee complaining about service of a notice after he has taken part in the proceeding, the three things it covers, and the much larger set of things it does not.
One text since the Finance Act 2008 inserted the section with effect from 1 April 2008, and the useful part of it is the proviso. The section deems service, and only service, where the assessee appeared or co-operated, and the proviso takes the whole section away where the assessee raised the objection before the assessment or reassessment was completed. Read it with section 292B, which is a different instrument doing a different job: section 292B saves a document from a mistake, defect or omission in it, while section 292BB saves the Department from an objection about how a document reached the assessee. Section 292BB does not reach the authority of the person who issued the notice, because each of its three limbs is about service. Whether section 292B can reach it is contested, and no High Court decision closing the question was traced for this page. Sourcing: read on the Department's Year 2026 edition.
Income-tax Act, 1961
s.292BB
Income-tax Act, 2025
s.523
In force from 1 April 2026, but s.536(2)(c) preserves the 1961 Act for tax years beginning before that date.
In short
Section 292BB of the Income-tax Act, 1961 provides that where an assessee has appeared in any proceeding or co-operated in any inquiry relating to an assessment or reassessment, it shall be deemed that any notice under any provision of the Act which is required to be served upon him has been duly served upon him in time in accordance with the provisions of the Act, and that he is precluded from taking any objection in any proceeding or inquiry under the Act that the notice was (a) not served upon him, (b) not served upon him in time, or (c) served upon him in an improper manner. The proviso is as important as the section: nothing contained in the section applies where the assessee has raised such objection before the completion of the assessment or reassessment. Three things follow from the words. Every limb is about service, so the section deems a notice served and does not deem a notice issued. It says nothing about who issued the notice. And the Supreme Court held in CIT v. Laxman Das Khandelwal that the section "does not save complete absence of notice", because for it to apply "the notice must have emanated from the department". One asymmetry governs how the proviso is used and is usually missed: section 292B carries no proviso and no condition of participation, so an objection raised before completion takes section 292BB out of the case and leaves section 292B exactly where it was. And the proviso does no more than remove the deeming; the assessee must still establish that the notice was not served, or not served in time, or served improperly. A point won on the proviso and lost on the facts of service is won on nothing. The counterpart in the Income-tax Act, 2025 is section 523, where the proviso is recast as a free-standing sub-section (2).
What the provision does
Deems service of a notice that was issued, and bars three specific objections about how it reached the assessee. It does not validate a notice that was never issued, one issued after the time the Act allows for issuing it, or, on the orthodox reading of its three limbs, one issued by an officer who had no authority to issue it, a line no binding authority has yet drawn and the Revenue contests. It does not cure a defect in the contents of a notice, which is section 292B's territory and a different question. And it does not apply at all where the objection was taken before the assessment was completed.
Threshold questions
- Whether the assessee appeared or co-operated at all, because the deeming is conditional on that and a wholly absent assessee is outside the section
- When the objection was first raised, because the proviso disapplies the section entirely where it was raised before the assessment or reassessment was completed
- Whether the complaint is about service or about something else, because only service is covered and issue, authority and contents are not
- Whether a notice was issued at all, since the section does not reach a complete absence of notice
- Whether the notice was served in a manner the Act recognises at all, because this section deems compliance and does not define it, so the provisions governing service still have to be satisfied
- Whether the Revenue is in truth relying on section 292B rather than this section, which is a different test, has no proviso and survives an early objection
In practice
The recurring disputes.
Service against issue, and whether the line holds
The assessee's case is that the three limbs are exhaustive and all three are about service, so an objection that the notice was never issued, or was issued out of time, or was issued by an officer who could not issue it, is outside the section altogether. The Supreme Court supports the first of those in CIT v. Laxman Das Khandelwal. The Revenue's case is that the deeming words are wider than the three clauses, because the section deems the notice "duly served upon him in time in accordance with the provisions of this Act", and that an assessee who took part in a proceeding for years should not be heard to unpick its foundation afterwards. The answer to that is that the deeming is of service and the clauses tell you what the deeming is for. The line is defensible and it is not self-executing, and an assessee who wants it should put the objection on the record before the assessment is framed, where the proviso takes this section away from the Revenue entirely.
What counts as raising the objection before completion
The proviso disapplies the section where the assessee has raised "such objection" before the completion of the assessment or reassessment, and the fight is about what that requires. The Revenue's position is that the objection must be the same objection, specific and identifiable, so that a general reservation of rights or a line in a reply on the merits will not do. The assessee's position is that the proviso asks only that the point was raised, and that an objection taken in correspondence and not repeated at every hearing is still an objection. The question is decided on the file, which is why the objection should be a separate letter with its own subject line and an acknowledgment, rather than a sentence buried in a submission.
A notice to an entity that no longer exists
The heaviest practical use of both sections together is a notice issued to a company that has amalgamated or otherwise ceased to exist. The Revenue pleads section 292B, that the wrong name is a mistake in a document which is in substance in conformity with the intent and purpose of the Act, and section 292BB, that the successor appeared and is precluded. The assessee says neither reaches it: a notice to a person who does not exist is not a defective notice but no notice at all, and participation cannot confer an existence the entity does not have. Which way a file goes turns on whether the Department was told of the amalgamation and in whose name the successor took part, so the correspondence matters more than the authorities. Our page on the assessment of a non-existent entity deals with the point in full.
Where section 292B ends and this section begins
The two sections are pleaded together and they do different things. Section 292B saves a return, assessment, notice, summons or other proceeding from invalidity for a mistake, defect or omission in it, if it is in substance in conformity with the intent and purpose of the Act. Section 292BB deems service. So a notice that named the wrong assessment year is a section 292B question, and a notice sent to the wrong address is a section 292BB question. Section 292BB does not reach an absence of authority in the officer, because none of its limbs is about issue. Whether section 292B does is argued both ways and is not settled: the Revenue's case is textual, that section 292B asks whether the notice is in substance and effect in conformity with the intent and purpose of the Act, and that a notice issued by an officer of the wrong rank within the same charge, on a case the Department was plainly entitled to scrutinise, may satisfy that test; the assessee's case is that want of authority is a fact about the officer and not a mistake in the document. Neither proposition has been decided against the Revenue by a court traced for this page, so the characterisation should be argued and not assumed.