Direct Tax Litigation · Ahmedabad
The assessment is over.
The argument begins.
Sunil Maloo & Co. was founded in 2019 in Ahmedabad by CA Sunil Maloo. The firm was set up to do a narrower thing than a general practice does — to take direct tax matters that are contested, and to carry them properly: search and seizure assessments, on-money and real estate additions, reassessment, penalty, and the appellate record that has to carry them through the CIT(A) and the Tribunal.
The firm
Litigation is a discipline, not an overflow.
In most practices, litigation is what happens when compliance work goes wrong. It is handled by the same people, in the time left over, with the file as it happens to exist. That is not a criticism of those practices — it is simply a different business.
This firm is organised the other way round. Contested matters are the work, not the consequence of the work. That changes what gets done: the record is built rather than assembled, jurisdictional points are taken before merits rather than after, quantum is reconciled rather than argued in the abstract, and drafting is treated as the principal activity it actually is.
It also changes when the thinking happens. A contested matter is usually determined by four or five decisions taken long before a hearing — what the order actually rests on, whether the jurisdictional point is ripe, whether to meet the number or the basis it was built from, and what is worth conceding to hold the ground that matters. Those decisions are the practice. Everything after them is execution, and execution is the part that can be delegated.
The practice concentrates on direct tax — search and seizure assessments, real estate and on-money disputes, reassessment, penalty, and the appellate work that follows. Advisory engagements are taken where they bear on a dispute: one that exists, one that is coming, or one a client is trying to avoid. The same judgment applies on either side of the line; a structure is only as good as the assessment it will one day have to survive.
At a glance
- Founded 2019
- Ahmedabad, Gujarat
- Direct tax litigation and advisory only
- Appearances before the CIT(A) and the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal
- Instructed both directly and on referral from other professionals
Founder
CA Sunil Maloo
Sunil Maloo is a chartered accountant — a member of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India since 2011 (membership no. 138564), and a rank-holder in the Institute’s PCC examination, having secured All India Rank 33. He also holds a law degree from Sir L. A. Shah Law College, Ahmedabad, and founded Sunil Maloo & Co. in 2019.
Since 2010 his work has been exclusively in direct tax — litigation and advisory, and nothing else. His practice concentrates on search and seizure assessments, real estate and construction tax matters, appeals before the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal, the faceless assessment and appeal regime, and advisory on high-end, complex issues. He appears before the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals) and the Tribunal, and is instructed by other chartered accountants and advocates on matters within that field.
His approach treats a direct tax matter as a problem of strategy: reading the facts and circumstances together with the law, through the lens of how a tribunal or court actually reasons. The firm’s work is built on that method — positioning a litigation or an advisory question so that the argument follows from the record rather than around it.
- Chartered Accountant, ICAI — membership no. 138564, since 2011
- All India Rank 33, CA PCC examination
- LL.B., Sir L. A. Shah Law College, Ahmedabad
- In direct tax litigation and advisory since 2010
A direct tax matter is a problem of strategy — the facts and the law read together, the way the bench will read them.
CA Sunil MalooThe work
Three areas, and the appeals that follow them.
Professionals bring us into a file when the matter turns evidentiary rather than arithmetical — when the addition rests on a seized document, a statement recorded under oath, or an estimate the Assessing Officer has not troubled to reconcile. We work alongside the existing advisor, not around them.
Sections 132 · 153A · 153C
Search & Seizure Assessments
Post-search assessments turn on what the seized material actually proves. Loose papers and dumb documents, statements recorded under section 132(4) and their retraction, the right to cross-examination, and the jurisdictional foundation of a section 153C satisfaction note.
The search practiceDevelopers · Builders · Land
Real Estate Tax Litigation
On-money additions, rejection of books under section 145(3), percentage-of-completion disputes, section 43CA and 56(2)(x) valuation differences, unsecured loans and capital introduction, and the quantum reconciliation that follows a blanket estimate.
Real estate disputesCIT(A) · ITAT · Faceless
Appellate Practice
Grounds drafted to be argued, not merely filed. Statements of fact, applications for admission of additional grounds under section 250(5), written submissions built on a document-anchored record, and paper books assembled so the bench can find what matters.
Appellate workHow a matter runs
The record decides the appeal.
An appellate authority cannot act on an argument that has no foundation in the file. Most of the work in a tax dispute is therefore not advocacy — it is building a record that makes the argument unavoidable.
An addition sustained on an estimate is only as strong as the material the estimate was drawn from.
Practice noteRead the order against the record
The assessment order, the seized material it relies on, the statements, the show-cause and the reply are read together. What the order asserts and what the record actually supports are rarely the same document.
Separate the jurisdictional from the merits
Whether the assessment could lawfully be made at all — satisfaction, approval, limitation, service, the existence of incriminating material — is a distinct enquiry from whether the addition is right. Both are taken, in that order.
Reconcile the quantum, line by line
A blanket estimate is met with a reconciliation: what is already recorded in the books, what is duplicated across years, what pertains to another entity, and what survives. A number the Department cannot break is worth more than an argument it can.
Draft to be argued
Grounds, statement of facts and written submissions are drafted as a single structure, each ground tied to a contention and each contention anchored to an enclosure. Where a ground was missed at filing, it is brought in properly under section 250(5) rather than argued without foundation.
How we work
Four commitments.
A view, early
You are told what a matter is worth at the outset, including when the honest answer is that a ground is weak or an appeal is not worth pursuing. An early accurate view is more valuable than a late optimistic one.
The file, before the argument
Time goes into the record first — what is on it, what is missing, and what must be placed on it now so that it can be relied on later. Arguments are built on documents, not around them.
Alongside your existing advisor
Where a matter comes on referral, the existing professional stays in it. The brief is the dispute, not the relationship, and nothing is done that cuts across it.
Written to be read by the bench
Submissions are drafted for the person who has to decide — structured, indexed, and short of rhetoric. If the point cannot be found, it has not been made.
If a notice has already reached you
Start with what is in your hand.
Most of what determines the outcome of a tax dispute happens early — in what is said in reply, what is placed on record, and what is allowed to go unchallenged. Find the provision on your notice below.
Time limits do not wait for a decision.
Appeals, objections and replies each run on their own clock, and several of them are measured in days rather than months. If a limitation date is approaching, say so when you write — it changes the order in which things need to be done.
Insights
Published analysis.
Reading of statute, judgments and Finance Act amendments as they land — written for practitioners, in long form and in slides.
GAAR Part 3: judicial doctrine, Circular 7 of 2017 and defending a reference
The third of three Parts on the General Anti-Avoidance Rule, and the one a practitioner uses. Chapter X-A did not displace the judicial anti-avoidance doctrine, and whether a judge-made rule can be used to do what Parliament has set conditions for doing is the second large open question in this field. Walfort is cited on both sides and contains no sentence about bonus stripping at all. The Board's sixteen clarifications of 27 January 2017 will be produced across the table and the first of them goes against the taxpayer. Before any of that, a chartered accountant has usually already answered the GAAR question in Form 3CD clause 30C, in a document signed and filed before any notice issued, and the deferral of that clause appears to have ended on 31 March 2022. This Part sets out the doctrine, the circular, the Department's case at its highest, the clause 30C exposure, how a reference is answered, how a transaction is built so that the question does not arise, and the full concordance with the Income-tax Act, 2025.
GAAR Part 1: what makes an arrangement impermissible under section 96
The first of three Parts on the General Anti-Avoidance Rule, and the one that decides most files. Before Chapter X-A applies at all the arrangement has to clear the two gates in Rule 10U, a tax benefit of more than three crore rupees in aggregate to all the parties in the year and the grandfathering of income arising from the transfer of investments made before 1 April 2017. Then section 96(1) requires two things together, a main purpose of obtaining a tax benefit and at least one of the four descriptions in clauses (a) to (d), which are alternatives to each other rather than a further list of cumulative conditions. This Part sets out both gates, both conditions, the four clauses including the commercial substance deeming provisions in section 97, the definitions in section 102 that decide who is inside an arrangement and whose tax benefit is counted, the presumption in section 96(2), and the arithmetic by which bonus stripping actually produces a loss. The counterpart provision in the Income-tax Act, 2025 is given in brackets throughout.
GAAR Part 2: consequences, the section 144BA machinery and the remedy
The second of three Parts on the General Anti-Avoidance Rule, and the one that matters once a reference has been made. It opens with section 99, which belongs to the test rather than to its consequences: it lets the Revenue collapse connected persons, disregard an accommodating party and look through a structure for the purpose of deciding whether a tax benefit exists at all, which is how a benefit is found in a taxpayer who has none and how the three crore threshold in Rule 10U is reached. Section 98 then permits a recharacterisation wide enough to disregard an entity. Whether section 100 lets the Revenue reach conduct Parliament chose to address by a specific rule, the section 94(8) problem, is the central unresolved question in this field. The section 144BA machinery has three stages and the taxpayer's leverage sits in the second, because the reference to the Approving Panel arises only where the assessee has objected. No appeal lies against the Panel's directions. This Part also sets out what the three Telangana High Court decisions actually decide and what is pending in the Supreme Court.
Brief us
Bring us the order and the record. We will tell you what it is worth.
An initial reading tells you where the matter stands, which grounds are worth taking, and what the record still needs. Send the assessment order and the notice, and we will respond with a view.