Dismissing the appeal of the revenue, the Court held that once the requirement of bifurcation and apportionment of expenditure had been accorded a judicial imprimatur by the Supreme Court, there would exist no justification or leeway to even consider the contentions which were advanced by the assessee. In terms of section 14A, expenditure was liable to be excluded  from consideration only if the assessee was found to have earned exempt income and the expenditure pertained to that income. Absent any income that was exempt or claimed as such in the relevant assessment year, the statutory exclusion would not apply. The existence of exempt income was thus a sin qua non for the invocation of section 14A. The Act is not concerned with notional or illusory income. Unless there was non-taxable income which arose or accrued, the expenditure would not suffer disqualification under section 14A. The Court also held that the Memorandum Explaining the Provisions of the Finance Bill, 2022 (2022) 440 ITR (Stat) 226 had unequivocally declared that “This amendment will take effect from April 1, 2022 and will accordingly apply in relation to the assessment year 2022-2023 and subsequent assessment years”. The order of the Tribunal holding that the disallowances under section 14A would be liable to be restricted to the extent of exempt income earned in the relevant assessment years need not be interfered with.