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registered valuer as a zombie credential: its charging statute abolished in 2015, its registration machinery never repealed, kept alive only by a cross-reference inside Rule 11U. That description is now out of date. The Income-tax Act, 2025 has given that credential a fresh statutory home of its own, carried its ten asset categories over intact, and said nothing at all about the Section 247 valuer.
A Registration Regime, Not a Cross-Reference
CBDT notified the Income-tax Rules, 2026 on 20 March 2026, in force from 1 April 2026 alongside the Income-tax Act, 2025 itself. Rules 246 to 250 build out a complete valuer registration regime under Section 514 of the new Act: an application in Form 169 with a non-refundable ₹10,000 fee, to be disposed of within six months; a qualification table in Rule 247; a statutory fee scale in Rule 248; and 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 do not borrow. They register.
The Same Ten Categories, Carried Over Intact
Rule 247 registers valuers across ten asset classes: 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 Is Not Recognised, and Not Even Mentioned
The sharpest feature of the new regime is what it declines to do. A person already 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 own table.
The transitional provision confirms whose credential the drafters actually 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.
Rule 247's Sixth Category Overlaps the SFA Class Almost Exactly
Category six, securities and business assets, qualifies Chartered Accountants, Cost Accountants, Company Secretaries with practice experience, or an MBA in finance with a valuation background. Set 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, 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 given signature is valid turns entirely on which of the two registers the signer happens to sit on for the specific statute being satisfied, a problem this framework has produced before and has now reproduced deliberately rather than by drafting accident.
One Genuine Innovation: A Statutory Fee Scale
Rule 248 does something Section 247's 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, and 0.05 per cent on the balance, subject to a ₹5,000 minimum, with multiple assets of one assessee 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
The count in the earlier terminology piece needs revising upward. It is no longer two registered-valuer credentials sharing a name, one of them dormant. It is two live registers, maintained by two regulators under two statutes, covering overlapping professionals with non-overlapping asset-class schemes, three classes on the IBBI side and ten on the CBDT side, neither recognising the other anywhere in its text.
For anyone holding the Section 247 credential and doing income-tax valuation work, the practical question is now a registration question rather than a competence one. The deadline that matters, 30 September 2026, belongs to the other credential. There is no deadline for the Section 247 valuer, because there is no route for them to miss.