The 1957 Valuer Is Dead. The Income-tax Act Just Rebuilt It.
An earlier piece here described the Wealth-tax Act's registered valuer as a zombie credential: charging statute abolished in 2015, registration machinery never repealed, kept alive by one cross-reference. That description is out of date. The Income-tax Act, 2025 has given the credential a statutory home of its own and carried its ten asset categories over intact. This piece works from the text of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 as notified, and reports what Rules 246 to 250 say about the Section 247 valuer: nothing.
The New Rules Register. They Do Not Borrow.
CBDT notified the Income-tax Rules, 2026 on 20 March 2026, in force from 1 April 2026 alongside the Income-tax Act, 2025. Rules 246 to 250 build a complete valuer registration regime under Section 514 of the new Act:
- An application in Form 169 with a non-refundable ₹10,000 fee
- Disposal of that application within six months
- A qualification table in Rule 247, and a statutory fee scale in Rule 248
- A prescribed valuation report in Form 170
This is a different kind of legal object from what Rule 11U(g) did. That provision, covered in Who Counts as a 'Valuer'? Six Statutes, Five Different Answers, merely pointed at Section 34AB of the Wealth-tax Act, 1957 and borrowed whoever was registered there. The 2026 Rules maintain a register of their own.
The Same Ten Categories, Carried Over Intact
Rule 247 registers valuers across immovable property, agricultural land, plantations, forests, mines and quarries, securities and business assets, plant and machinery, jewellery, works of art, and life interest and reversions. That is the Wealth-tax Rule 8A list, category for category, in the same order.
The qualifying tests came across too. A jewellery valuer still needs five years in the jewellery business with roughly ₹15 lakh turnover, or a gemologist qualification. A works-of-art valuer still needs museum or archaeological standing. A life-interest valuer must still be a Fellow of the Actuarial Society of India. What changed is the statute the credential hangs from, not the credential.
Section 247 Gets No Recognition, and No Mention
The sharpest feature of the new regime is what it declines to do. A person registered under Section 247 of the Companies Act, holding the IBBI credential in Securities or Financial Assets, gets no recognition, no exemption, and no fast-track. To value anything for income-tax purposes they must register again, under Rule 246, in Form 169, paying the same ₹10,000, and qualify afresh under Rule 247's table.
The transitional provision confirms whose credential the drafters had in mind. It runs to existing Wealth-tax Act registrations, valid as at 31 March 2026, which continue as Section 514 registrations subject to updating details by 30 September 2026. The 1957 valuer is grandfathered. The 2017 valuer is a stranger to the rule.
Category Six Overlaps the SFA Class Almost Exactly
Rule 247's sixth category, securities and business assets, qualifies Chartered Accountants, Cost Accountants, Company Secretaries with practice experience, or an MBA in finance with a valuation background.
Set that against Annexure IV of the Companies (Registered Valuers and Valuation) Rules, 2017, which qualifies ICAI, ICSI or ICMAI members or a finance MBA for Securities or Financial Assets, and the two lists describe substantially the same professional population. Two registration regimes, two application processes, two fees, two report formats, and largely one set of eligible people. Whether a signature is valid turns entirely on which register the signer sits on for the statute being satisfied.
A Fee Scale Set as a Percentage of the Value Certified
Rule 248 does something the Section 247 framework has never done. It fixes what a valuer may charge, on a sliding percentage of the value assessed:
- 0.5 per cent on the first ₹5 lakh
- 0.2 per cent on the next ₹10 lakh
- 0.1 per cent on the next ₹40 lakh
- 0.05 per cent on the balance, subject to a ₹5,000 minimum
Multiple assets of one assessee are treated as a single asset for the computation. Nothing equivalent exists under the Companies Act regime, where remuneration is left to the engagement and governed only in general terms by the Model Code of Conduct. A fee expressed as a percentage of the number being certified is a structure most valuation ethics frameworks treat warily, for the obvious reason. Here it is the prescribed scale.
What This Means in Practice
If you hold the Section 247 credential and do income-tax valuation work, treat this as a registration question, not a competence one, and register separately under Rule 246. There is no bridge to cross and no transitional deadline to miss, because there is no route provided for you at all. The 30 September 2026 deadline belongs to the other credential.
The count in the earlier terminology piece needs revising upward. It is no longer two credentials sharing a name with one of them dormant. It is two live registers, maintained by two regulators under two statutes, covering overlapping professionals under non-overlapping asset-class schemes, three classes on the IBBI side and ten on the CBDT side.
Neither register recognises the other. Neither statute mentions the other. Both are now in force.