Section 256 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 — Power of Certain Income-tax Authorities to Make Enquiries

In plain language

What Section 256 actually says

Section 256 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 is a short but powerful tax-administration provision. It states that a specific list of senior income-tax officers "shall be competent to make any enquiry under this Act, and for that purpose, shall have all the powers that an Assessing Officer has under this Act in relation to the making of enquiries."

In plain English: certain senior officers who are not your regular Assessing Officer (AO) can also step in and conduct an enquiry into your tax affairs — and when they do, they carry the same enquiry toolkit that an AO has (calling for information, summoning people, examining records, and so on).

Who exactly gets these powers?

The Act names the ranks explicitly. The officers competent to make enquiries under Section 256 are:

• Principal Director General or Director General (Pr. DGIT / DGIT)
• Principal Director or Director (Pr. DIT / DIT)
• Principal Chief Commissioner or Chief Commissioner (Pr. CCIT / CCIT)
• Principal Commissioner or Commissioner (Pr. CIT / CIT)
• Joint Commissioner (JCIT)

Notice the design: it covers the investigation wing (Directors General/Directors) and the administrative/appellate hierarchy (Chief Commissioners, Commissioners) plus the Joint Commissioner. These are all officers senior to, or supervising, the AO.

What "powers of an Assessing Officer for enquiries" means

The section does not create new powers out of thin air. It borrows the AO's existing enquiry powers found elsewhere in the 2025 Act and hands them to these senior officers. In practice that means the ability to:

• Summon a person and examine on oath — under Section 246 (the 2025 successor to old Section 131), which gives income-tax authorities the discovery, evidence and summons powers of a civil court.
• Call for information and documents — require books of account, statements, and records to be produced.
• Enforce attendance and record statements, including of bank officers and third parties connected to a transaction.

So Section 256 is essentially an enabling / empowering clause: it says "these senior ranks can also do enquiries, using the AO's enquiry powers," so that a case does not have to wait for the jurisdictional AO to act.

Who and what it applies to

• Applies to every taxpayer — individuals, HUFs, firms, LLPs, companies, trusts — because any of them can be the subject of an enquiry.
• It is a power vested in the department, not a duty on taxpayers to file anything. You do not "comply with Section 256"; you respond to a notice/summons issued under the underlying enquiry provision (e.g., Section 246).
• It is triggered when a senior officer decides an enquiry is needed — for example, before selecting a case for scrutiny, while examining a survey report, verifying suspicious transactions, or supervising an investigation.

How it interacts with related sections

• Section 246 (old Section 131) — discovery, production of evidence, summons. This is the main power Section 256 lets senior officers exercise.
• Survey and search provisions — enquiries under Section 256 often feed into or follow a survey or a search.
• Assessment provisions — the fruit of an enquiry can lead the AO to reopen or reassess income.
• Revision powers (e.g., Section 377/378, old 263/264) — a Commissioner examining a record for revision may need to make an enquiry, and Section 256 is the source of that power.

Practical implications for taxpayers

• A notice can come from above your AO. Do not dismiss a summons just because it is not from your jurisdictional Assessing Officer — a Director, Commissioner or Joint Commissioner can lawfully call for information.
• The powers are quasi-judicial. Because they mirror civil-court powers under Section 246, giving false information or ignoring a valid summons can attract penalties and prosecution.
• Keep clean records. Bank statements, invoices, agreements and confirmations are exactly what an enquiry seeks. Being able to produce them quickly closes an enquiry faster.
• Continuity from the old law. Section 256 is a near word-for-word re-enactment of Section 135 of the Income-tax Act, 1961. So all the settled understanding under the old law carries forward — this is not a new burden, just renumbered.

Bottom line: Section 256 is a machinery provision that keeps tax administration flexible by letting senior officers, not only the AO, conduct enquiries using the AO's enquiry powers. For an honest taxpayer it changes nothing about tax liability; it simply widens the class of officers who may lawfully ask questions.