As there are two sides to a coin, the legal heirs have the right to enjoy the deceased person’s income and the duty to pay taxes on that income on behalf of the latter. In this article, let us see in detail about filing ITR for the deceased person’s income.

LEGAL BACKUP:

Section 159 of the Income Tax Act, 1961, has stated that the legal representatives are liable to file the ITR for their deceased predecessor. Once the legal representative has been accepted as a Legal Heir by the Assessing Officer (AO) (who falls under the Jurisdictional limit of the Deceased Person’s PAN Card limit), then the Legal heir will be named as an “Assessee”.

Example 1: ‘A’ is the first successors of an estate of a deceased person, and the estate is not yet distributed to the successors then, ‘A’ will be liable to pay the tax on the income received from that estate as a legal representative of that deceased person.

Example 2: ‘A’ has a commercial land and had let it out for a rental to many people, and his son is engaged in some other business. If ‘A’ died in the month of October 2019, then ‘A’s son is liable to pay tax on his business’s incomes and rental income from the land (as a legal representative of ‘A’).

If even before the death of a deceased person, a proceeding initiated against him or penalty was imposed or demand was made, then the proceeding will continue or penalty will be levied or demand will be made to his legal representative.

FILING OF ITR:

As already mentioned, the legal heir has to file the ITR (in the respective ITR Forms) for the deceased person only when the AO approves the legal representatives of the deceased as a “legal heir”.

The procedure to get approved as a legal heir is mentioned below. Documents Required: The below-mentioned documents are required for enrolling as a legal heir:- ​

1. Death Certificate.

2. PAN Card of the Deceased person.

3. PAN Card of the Legal Representative.

4. Legal Heir Certificate

PROCEDURE:

The procedure to get approved as a legal heir is as follows:

1. “Log in” in https://www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/

2. Click on “My Account”

3. Select “Authorize/Register as a Representative“

4. “New Request Form” Appears

5. Select “New Request” in the “Request Type” Column

6. Select “Register to act on Behalf of Another Person” in “Authorize/Register as Representative” column

7. Select “Estate of deceased” in category to register

8. Enter details of the Deceased in next step (upload necessary documents having size less than 5MB)

On receipt of the request, the board will approve/reject it. The communication of approval or rejection will be sent to the mail. After the approval, ITR for the income of the deceased person can be filed by legal heir.

_ By Tax Team