Representative assessment of executors turns on the will's beneficiary structure and the provision governing income receivable for others

Executors receiving agricultural income under a will are assessable under the representative machinery applicable to income receivable on behalf of beneficiaries, not under the provision for a deceased person's legal representative. Section 24 applies only to tax attributable to the deceased's lifetime income, whereas section 10 governs income receivable by an executor for others. Where the will divides the estate into two distinct beneficiary groups, the executors are assessed in that representative capacity for those two groups, not separately for each of the six individual beneficiaries.

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Issues: (i) Whether the executors were assessable under section 24 of the Mysore Agricultural Income-tax Act, 1957, or under section 10 of that Act; and (ii) if section 10 applied, whether the executors were to be assessed on behalf of the six beneficiaries separately or on behalf of the two sets of beneficiaries constituted under the will.

Issue (i): Whether the executors were assessable under section 24 of the Mysore Agricultural Income-tax Act, 1957, or under section 10 of that Act.

Analysis: Section 24 is the provision dealing with liability of the legal representative of a deceased person in respect of tax payable by the deceased. It corresponds to section 24B of the Indian Income-tax Act, 1922, and applies only where the assessment is of income attributable to the deceased in his lifetime. The estate in question had long ceased to be the estate of the deceased, and the agricultural income was being received by the executors on behalf of the beneficiaries under the will. Section 10(1)(a), on the other hand, specifically covers agricultural income receivable by an executor on behalf of any person and requires tax to be levied on the executor in the same manner and to the same extent as on the person on whose behalf the income is receivable.

Conclusion: The executors were assessable under section 10 of the Mysore Agricultural Income-tax Act, 1957, and not under section 24.

Issue (ii): If section 10 applied, whether the executors were to be assessed on behalf of the six beneficiaries separately or on behalf of the two sets of beneficiaries constituted under the will.

Analysis: The will did not create separate bequests in favour of each of the six children. It divided the residuary income and corpus into two equal shares, one for one set of three children and the other for the second set of three children. The executors therefore received and held the income as representatives of two distinct beneficiary groups, not as representatives of six individual beneficiaries separately.

Conclusion: The executors were liable to be assessed on behalf of the two sets of beneficiaries and not separately on behalf of the six children.

Final Conclusion: The assessment lay under the representative machinery of section 10, and the executors were chargeable only in respect of the two beneficiary groups created by the will.

Ratio Decidendi: Where an executor receives agricultural income under a will for beneficiaries, the liability is representative in character and must be measured by the persons on whose behalf the income is receivable; the will governs whether assessment is to be made for individual beneficiaries or for distinct beneficiary groups.

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