Sub-section (1) allows an applicant desirous of obtaining an advance ruling under this Chapter to make an application, in such form and manner as may be prescribed, stating the question on which the advance ruling is sought. Sub-section (2) requires the application to be accompanied by a fee, as may be prescribed. Sub-section (3) allows an applicant to withdraw an application within thirty days from the date of the application.
Why it is there
An advance ruling is sought before a transaction is tested in assessment, so the Act fixes how the process starts — a written question, in a prescribed form, with a prescribed fee. The short withdrawal window lets an applicant step back where the transaction changes soon after filing, without leaving the application open to be withdrawn once proceedings are under way.
Who it applies to
An applicant desirous of obtaining an advance ruling under this Chapter
An applicant seeking to withdraw an application already made
The figures, and what each one turns on
Read the condition in the same row. A figure quoted without it is a wrong answer with a citation attached.
What
Figure
The condition on it
Where
Period within which an application may be withdrawn
Thirty days
From the date of the application
Sub-section (3)
Fee accompanying the application
A fee as may be prescribed
The section states that a fee is payable but not its amount
Sub-section (2)
What this means in practice
The application must frame a question, so the ruling is confined to what is asked. The fee amount is not in the section; sub-section (2) leaves it to what is prescribed. The withdrawal right runs from the date of the application, not from any notice, hearing or acknowledgement, and it is absolute within those thirty days and unavailable after them.
An example
Illustrative only, and invented for this page. The figures are chosen to show the rule biting, not taken from any real matter.
An applicant files on 1 June, stating the question on which a ruling is sought, with the prescribed fee. On 25 June the transaction is abandoned and the application can be withdrawn, because the thirty days run from 1 June. From 1 July onwards the section gives no right to withdraw it.
Where you meet this section
In the prescribed application form for an advance ruling and the fee paid with it. The withdrawal in sub-section (3) is exercised within thirty days of the date of the application, and is the only step the section leaves the applicant after filing.
The words themselves
An applicant may withdraw an application within thirty days from the date of the application
Section 383(3), Income-tax Act, 2025.
What people get wrong
Counting the thirty days from receipt of the application or from a hearing. Sub-section (3) counts from its date.
Looking for the fee amount in the section. Sub-section (2) says only that a fee as may be prescribed shall accompany the application.
Filing without framing the question, which sub-section (1) requires.
Assuming withdrawal is available at any time before the ruling.
What this replaced
The correspondence is the Income Tax Department’s own, from its comparison utility for the 1961 and 2025 Acts. A renumbering is the easy half; whether the words changed is the half that decides cases.
Rules of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 that work section 383. Where the rule’s own heading names the section we say so; the rest are marked on reading the rule, which is our derivation and not the department’s. A rule that serves the section silently and that we have missed will not appear here.
Rule 200 — Application for obtaining an advance ruling under section 383
A notification is made under a power the Act gives and, within that power, is law. These too were made under the 1961 Act and are placed here by the department’s concordance.
Read this before you rely on it. Every decision below was decided under the Income-tax Act, 1961. It appears here because it is tagged to a 1961 provision that the department’s own mapping carries to section 383. That is an inference we have drawn, not a holding on the new section: where the words changed in the move, the reasoning may not survive. Treat this as the place to start looking, not as authority on the 2025 Act.
Petition No. 7 of 1995, In reITATHelps departmenttagged s.245Q(1) I flew out of India in October. Does the day I left count as a day of stay in India for the 182-day test, and does a part-day count?
Explainers
Advance rulings and the Boardtagged s.245Q Can I get the tax position on a transaction decided in advance, and will the department be bound by it?
What this page does not tell you. It does not reproduce the section. Everything above was written from the section’s own text as the Income Tax Department publishes it — the text is here, and nothing here is advice on your facts. Where a figure matters, read the sub-section it comes from.
