ITR Filing — AOP / BOI

Filing basis under the Income-tax Act, 1961. Associations of Persons (AOP) and Bodies of Individuals (BOI) file Form ITR-5, the same return used by firms and LLPs.

Rate of tax is governed by Section 167B, and depends on how the members' shares are structured:
— If the individual shares of members in the AOP/BOI's income are indeterminate or unknown, the entire income is taxed at the maximum marginal rate (MMR) — currently the highest slab rate applicable to individuals, effectively 30% plus applicable surcharge and cess.
— If shares are determinate but any member's total income (excluding their share from the AOP/BOI) exceeds the basic exemption limit, or any member is taxed at a rate higher than the maximum marginal rate, the AOP/BOI's income is taxed at the MMR.
— If shares are determinate and no member's income exceeds the basic exemption limit, the AOP/BOI is taxed at the normal slab rates applicable to an individual, with the basic exemption available to the entity itself.

Section 44AB tax audit applies to an AOP/BOI on the same turnover/receipts thresholds as any other business assessee (₹1 crore business / ₹10 crore with ≤5% cash transactions; ₹50 lakh for a specified profession). Where an audit applies for AY 2026-27, the ITR-5 due date is 31 October 2026 (audit report due 30 September 2026); non-audit AOP/BOI filings are generally due 31 July 2026.

Sources: taxguru.in, legalsuvidha.com, and callmyca.com on Section 167B's three-tier rate structure; disytax.com and caclubindia.com on ITR-5 applicability and the AY 2026-27 audit-linked due dates (WebSearch, 8 Sep 2026).

Income tax return filing for Association of Persons (AOP) and Body of Individuals (BOI) covers the entities through which joint income is taxed under the Income-tax Act 1961. An AOP or BOI is a separate taxable entity under Section 2(31) of the Act — the group of persons who join for a common purpose with their incomes assessed together — and it files its own return, pays its own tax, and is assessed as a separate person. The return is filed under Section 139(1) in the applicable ITR form, and the income is taxed at the slab rates with the members' shares exempt from a second tax in their own hands.

The AOP or BOI is the structure for the joint ventures, the clubs and the groups whose income is genuinely joint. The assessment is on the entity, and the members are not taxed again on their shares of the income that has already been taxed in the entity's hands. The entity's records — the deed or the agreement, the accounts, the PAN — are what make the assessment real.

The cost of an unmanaged AOP or BOI is the tax in the wrong hands: the income assessed in the members' hands without the entity's return, the double taxation of the income that was never treated as the entity's, and the penalty exposure under the Act for the non-filing. The entity that is not maintained as a real entity is the entity that the department will not respect.

This service is for AOPs and BOIs and their members. We set up the entity's records and the PAN where needed, compute the entity's income and the members' shares under the Act, prepare and file the return under Section 139(1), manage the advance tax and the assessments, and coordinate the members' positions so the income is taxed once, in the right hands.