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.
Buy-back, 1 October 2024 to 31 March 2026: dividend and a stranded loss
For a buy-back that took place on or after 1 October 2024 and on or before 31 March 2026, that is in a year still governed by the Income-tax Act, 1961, section 2(22)(f) makes the whole consideration a dividend in the shareholder's hands, charged under "Income from other sources" with no accumulated-profits limit on the firm's reading of the sub-clause, which is argued the other way in this Part, and no deduction of any kind against it. The proviso to section 46A deems the value of consideration nil, so the computation under that section returns his cost of acquisition as a capital loss of exactly that amount, which section 71(3) bars from reaching the dividend and which section 50CA can reduce, remove or reverse where a share other than a quoted share is bought back below its prescribed fair market value, a collision this Part argues both ways and on which the firm's view is that the proviso governs. A long-term loss can be set off only against long-term capital gains, in that year or in the eight assessment years that follow, subject to the other conditions section 74(1) imports, and lapses if no such gains arrive; how that eight-year window is carried into the years governed by the Income-tax Act, 2025, for a loss first computed under the 1961 Act, is itself open; and two things condition the whole regime and are themselves open: it reaches only a purchase made in accordance with section 68 of the Companies Act, 2013, so whether those conditions were met is a tax question, and neither sub-clause (f) nor the proviso to section 46A mentions other specified securities, so on the words a buy-back in this window of an instrument that is not a share falls outside both and is computed on the actual consideration under the unamended main limb. For a resident shareholder the company deducts under section 194 at ten per cent of the whole dividend, sub-clause (f) being named in that section's own enumeration, subject to the narrow first proviso and to the payee exclusions in the second; for a buy-back in a tax year beginning on or after 1 April 2026 the Income-tax Act, 2025 governs and the position is in Part 3.
Buy-back, dividend or capital reduction: SEBI route and GAAR
A board returning cash to shareholders chooses between a dividend, a buy-back under section 68 of the Companies Act, 2013 and a distribution on a reduction of capital; whether a route is open comes first, because section 70(1) of that Act can bar a buy-back until a default has been remedied and three years have passed since it ceased to subsist, and a reduction needs the Tribunal's confirmation under section 66, and the tax then differs by route and by date. The dividend route and the reduction route differ on the cap: a distribution on a reduction is dividend only to the extent of accumulated profits while a declared dividend is taxable in full, and neither gives the shareholder credit for cost, while a buy-back was outside that cap in the window from 1 October 2024 to 31 March 2026 on the firm's contested reading of the words, and is an ordinary capital gains computation with cost allowed from the tax year beginning 1 April 2026. So for a shareholder who is not a promoter the route punished in the second regime is the favoured route in the third, while for a promoter the additional income-tax under section 69(2) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 and the twelve per cent surcharge that rides on it fall on a buy-back and not on a reduction. Part 4 also takes the SEBI position for a listed company, where the open market route through the stock exchange was not allowed from 1 April 2025 and is permitted again from 1 August 2026 at less than fifteen per cent of paid-up capital and free reserves, measured on words of its own, and the cooling-off regulation now defers to the Companies Act, and the general anti-avoidance rule, where a favourable direction of the Approving Panel did not stop the officer applying section 56(2)(x) to the same buy-back; and how the excess of a reduction distribution over accumulated profits is taxed, whether the receipt-of-property charge can reach a reduction at all, whether a redemption of preference shares is a purchase at all, and how an employee-securities buy-back sits with the SEBI methods are all open.
Buy-back taxation to 30 September 2024: section 115QA and who pays
A buy-back of shares has been taxed three different ways in thirteen years, and what moved each time was the identity of the person who pays rather than the rate. The regime therefore turns on the date the buy-back took place, an expression the Income-tax Act, 1961 does not define, so a buy-back announced before 1 October 2024 and completed after it is open to argument. Part 1 sets out the three regimes, the bar in section 67(1) of the Companies Act, 2013 on a company buying its own shares unless the consequent reduction of capital is effected under that Act, the obligation in section 68 to extinguish and physically destroy the shares bought back, the charge on a domestic company under section 115QA, measured on the consideration paid less what the company received when it issued the shares and not on what the shareholder paid for them, and which in its early years reached only a buy-back of shares that were not listed, and the shareholder's exemption under section 10(34A). The effective section 115QA burden is not a single figure: on a twelve per cent surcharge it is 23.072 per cent in a year carrying a two plus one per cent cess and 23.296 per cent where a single four per cent cess applies, and which Finance Act supplies that surcharge on a buy-back straddling 31 March is itself unsettled.
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.