In a recent ruling, the Mumbai bench of the Income-tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) has upheld the right of a taxpayer to change his selection of a house property that would be treated as self-occupied at the time of actual tax assessment.

Under the I-T Act, where an individual owns more than one house, he can only treat any one of his house properties as 'self-occupied and having a nil annual value'. As per reports, the ITAT, in its order of May 23, observed that "The I-T Act nowhere states that the option of selecting a self-occupied property, once exercised, cannot be changed."

Thereby, if the taxpayer has in his Income-tax (I-T) return declared a particular house property to be self-occupied, he can at a later stage during the actual tax assessment of his case substitute this with another house property owned by him. By doing so, he can reduce the notional rent that has to be offered for tax by opting to choose the locality in the superior area as self-occupied.

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