Cross the ₹50,000 aggregate by one rupee and the entire amount becomes taxable, not just the excess. Gifts from relatives are fully exempt at any value — but the Act’s definition of relative is narrower than a family’s.
India has no gift tax. It has Section 56(2)(x), which taxes the receiver as income from other sources.
For money, the test is whether the aggregate received during the year exceeds ₹50,000. It is not an exemption of the first ₹50,000. Receive ₹49,000 and nothing is taxable; receive ₹51,000 and the whole ₹51,000 is income, not the ₹1,000 excess. The same all-or-nothing structure applies to movable property received without consideration.
Spouse; brother or sister; brother or sister of the spouse; brother or sister of either parent; any lineal ascendant or descendant; any lineal ascendant or descendant of the spouse; and the spouse of each of those. Gifts from anyone on that list are exempt at any value. A cousin, a nephew, a close friend and an aunt’s husband are all outside it — and cousins are the most common misreading.
Where immovable property is bought for less than its stamp duty value, the difference is taxed only if it exceeds the higher of ₹50,000 or 10% of the consideration. That 10% band absorbs ordinary valuation differences between a negotiated price and a circle rate. A pure gift has no such tolerance — the whole stamp duty value is taxable if it exceeds ₹50,000.
A gift to your spouse or minor child is exempt in their hands, but any income it later earns is clubbed back into yours under Section 64. Moving a fixed deposit to a spouse’s name does not move the interest. Separately, a large gift with thin documentation is a standard reassessment trigger — keep the gift deed, the bank trail and the donor’s capacity on record even when the gift is plainly exempt.
The calculator does the arithmetic. TaxSphere — our free case-law library, 1,184 authorities and the Act in full — has the judgments, the circulars and the statutory text for the same provision.
