The Finance Act 2026 seems to have changed the reassessment rules backwards in time. What exactly did it change, from which dates, and which of my grounds has it taken away?
The Finance Act, 2026 (No. 4 of 2026), assented to on 30 March 2026, amended the Income-tax Act, 1961 through clauses 4 to 33, and six of those clauses are about assessment and reassessment. Clause 9 inserted section 147A, deemed in force from 1 April 2021, which makes the Assessing Officer for sections 148 and 148A an officer other than the National Faceless Assessment Centre or a section 144B(3) assessment unit, notwithstanding any judgment, section 151A or any scheme under it; clause 33 inserted section 292BC, also deemed in force from 1 April 2021, which makes an approval in any assessment or reassessment administrative and supervisory in nature and immune to attack for insufficient reasons or a missing digital signature. Clause 10 gave the section 148 notice a thirty-day floor from 30 March 2026, clause 11 substituted section 150 from 1 February 2026, and clauses 12 and 13 inserted section 153(10) and section 153B(1A), reaching back to 2009, to fix when a draft order under section 144C(1) may be made. Sections 147, 148A, 149, 151 and 151A were not amended at all. Section 147A has since been struck down by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Jyoti Sareen v. Union of India on 10 September 2026, and that judgment was stayed by the Supreme Court on 18 September 2026, which hears the appeal on 3 December 2026.
Decided by the CBDT Circulars & Instructions (Not applicable — statutory text) on 2026-03-30, reported as Sections 147A, 148(1), 153(10), 153B(1A), 292BA and 292BC of the Income-tax Act, 1961, as amended up to 2026 and as enacted in the Finance Act, 2026. It bears on section 147A, section 292BC, section 148, section 153, section 153B, section 144C, section 150, section 292BA, section 148A, section 149, section 151, section 151A, section 144B, section 147, section 153A, section 292BB of the Income Tax Act 1961, in Reassessment & Reopening, Assessment & Scrutiny and Faceless Assessment & Appeals matters.
Two of your standard reassessment grounds have been legislated away with effect from 1 April 2021, which is the first year of the present scheme, so they reach essentially every reopening now in the system. The first is the faceless point — that the jurisdictional officer could not issue the notice because the Scheme under section 151A required it to go through the faceless mechanism. Section 147A answers it directly. The second is the approval point — that the section 151 sanction was mechanical, or unsigned, or never properly communicated. Section 292BC answers that one, and it has had a fraction of the attention, so it is the one more likely to be sitting unaddressed in a pending appeal. Work out what that means for a live file. If your grounds of appeal are (a) notice by the jurisdictional officer, (b) mechanical approval, and (c) the additions on the merits, then after this Act ground (a) survives only as a constitutional challenge to section 147A, ground (b) survives only in the form section 292BC does not reach — no approval at all, or approval by an authority other than the one section 151 names, or an approval not granted electronically — and ground (c) is now doing most of the work. Any file where the merits were never argued because the technical ground looked unanswerable needs re-opening and re-arguing. The one change that runs the other way is the thirty-day floor in section 148(1). It applies only to notices issued on or after 30 March 2026, and it is the sort of defect that appears on the face of the notice, so it costs nothing to check.
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The Finance Act, 2026 is Act No. 4 of 2026. It received the President's assent on 30 March 2026. Its clauses amending the Income-tax Act, 1961 run from clause 4 to clause 33, and six of them are the subject of this entry. Each text below is set out as it currently stands, and each was checked against the clause of the enacted Act that put it there. Section 147A, inserted after section 147 by clause 9, under the marginal note “Assessing Officer for purposes of sections 148 and 148A”. Clause 9 enacts: “After section 147 of the Income-tax Act, the following section shall be inserted and shall be deemed to have been inserted with effect from the 1st day of April, 2021, namely:” The section has no sub-sections and reads in full: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court or in section 151A or in any scheme framed thereunder, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified that the Assessing Officer for the purposes of sections 148 and 148A shall mean and shall always be deemed to have meant to be an Assessing Officer other than the National Faceless Assessment Centre or any assessment unit referred to in sub-section (3) of section 144B.” The departmental footnote is “Ins. by Act No. 4 of 2026, w.r.e.f. 1-4-2021.” Section 148(1), amended by clause 10. Clause 10 enacts: “In section 148 of the Income-tax Act, in sub-section (1), after the words “specified in the notice,” the words “not being less than thirty days from the date of such notice but” shall be inserted and shall be deemed to have been inserted with effect from the 30th day of March, 2026.” Before that insertion the sub-section required the officer to issue a notice “requiring him to furnish, within such period as may be specified in the notice, not exceeding three months from the end of the month in which such notice is issued, a return of his income”. It now reads “requiring him to furnish, within such period as may be specified in the notice, not being less than thirty days from the date of such notice but not exceeding three months from the end of the month in which such notice is issued, a return of his income”. The footnote on the current printing is “Ins. by Act No. 4 of 2026, w.e.f. 30-3-2026.” Section 150, substituted by clause 11 and deemed substituted with effect from 1 February 2026. That substitution has its own entry in this library and is not repeated here; in short it splits sub-section (1) into an authority limb and a court limb, adds a second measuring moment to sub-section (2), and creates a sub-section (3) giving the section 148 notice an outer date of its own — three months from the end of the quarter in which the certified copy of the order reaches the jurisdictional Principal Commissioner or Commissioner. Section 153(10), inserted by clause 12 after sub-section (9) and deemed inserted with effect from 1 April 2009: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified that in terms of provisions of sub-sections (1) to (4), the draft of the proposed order of assessment referred to in sub-section (1) of section 144C shall be made, and shall always be deemed to have been made, at any time up to the time limit of assessment, reassessment or recomputation referred to in the said sub-sections.” Footnote: “Ins. by Act No. 4 of 2026, w.r.e.f. 1-4-2009.” Section 153B(1A), inserted by clause 13 after sub-section (1) and deemed inserted with effect from 1 October 2009, in the same terms adapted to the search time limits: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified that in terms of provisions of this section, the draft of the proposed order of assessment referred to in sub-section (1) of section 144C shall be made, and shall always be deemed to have been made, at any time up to the time limit of assessment, reassessment or recomputation referred to in this section.” Footnote: “Ins. by Act No. 4 of 2026, w.r.e.f. 1-10-2009.” Section 292BC, inserted by clause 33 after section 292BB and deemed inserted with effect from 1 April 2021, under the marginal note “Circumstances in which approvals by income-tax authority not to be invalid”: “Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or in any judgment, order or decree of any Court, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified that any approval given by an income-tax authority in relation to any assessment, reassessment or recomputation proceedings under this Act shall be deemed to be administrative and supervisory in nature and shall not be invalid or shall not be deemed to be invalid by reason of any insufficiency of the reasons recorded or by reason of any defect in the form or manner of its authentication or communication including whether digital signature have been appended to such approval or not, where such approval is granted electronically.” Footnote: “Ins. by Act No. 4 of 2026, w.r.e.f. 1-4-2021.” Section 292BA, inserted by clause 32 after section 292B and deemed inserted with effect from 1 October 2019: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified for the purposes of section 292B that no assessment under any of the provisions of this Act shall be invalid or shall be deemed to have been invalid on the ground of any mistake, defect or omission in respect of quoting of a computer generated Document Identification Number, if the assessment order is referenced by such number in any manner.” One more clause in the same part is worth naming because sections 153(10) and 153B(1A) do not work without it. Clause 8 amends section 144C, inserting sub-sections (4A) and (13A) with effect from 1 April 2009 and sub-sections (4B) and (13B) with effect from 1 October 2009. Sub-section (4A) reads: "Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court, or section 153, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified for the purposes of sub-section (4) that where a draft of the proposed order of assessment under sub-section (1) is forwarded within the time period allowed under section 153, further time period available to the Assessing Officer to complete the assessment under sub-section (3) shall be governed and shall always be deemed to have been governed by the provisions of sub-section (4)." Sub-section (4B) is in the same terms with section 153B in place of section 153. Sub-section (13A) is the same idea for sub-section (13): where the draft is forwarded within the section 153 time, the time available under sub-section (13) to pass the order on receipt of the Panel's direction "shall be governed and shall always be deemed to have been governed by the provisions of sub-sections (12) and (13)". Sub-section (13B) is (13A) with section 153B. So the four sub-sections work from the other end to the same result as sections 153(10) and 153B(1A): once the draft order has gone out in time, the section 144C clocks govern everything after it. Clause 7 makes a small change with a wide reach: in section 144B(6)(i)(b) the words “by affixing digital signature” are replaced by “by way of an electronic communication”, deemed substituted with effect from 1 April 2022.
Take the six provisions one at a time, because they do quite different things and only two of them are about jurisdiction. Section 147A settles who may issue a notice under section 148 or section 148A. It is an Assessing Officer who is neither the National Faceless Assessment Centre nor an assessment unit constituted under section 144B(3). The exclusion is disjunctive, so the officer must be outside both. The section says so notwithstanding a judgment, order or decree of any court, notwithstanding section 151A, and notwithstanding any scheme framed under section 151A — which is the Scheme notified on 29 March 2022 that the whole dispute was about. It does not repeal section 151A; it overrides it for the purposes of sections 148 and 148A and leaves it standing for everything else. It does not touch what section 144B does once the assessment is under way. Its operative formula is “for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified”, and its date is 1 April 2021, the first day of the present reassessment scheme. Section 292BC settles what an approval has to look like. Any approval by an income-tax authority in an assessment, reassessment or recomputation is deemed administrative and supervisory in nature, and is not invalid for insufficiency of the reasons recorded, or for a defect in the form or manner of its authentication or communication, including whether or not a digital signature was appended, where the approval is granted electronically. In practice that is aimed at the sanction under section 151. Read its edges. It cures a defective approval; it does not supply one that was never given. It says nothing about approval by an authority other than the one section 151 names. And it works only where the approval was granted electronically — the closing words of the section are a condition, not decoration. Section 292BA is the same technique applied to the Document Identification Number. An assessment is not invalid for a mistake, defect or omission in quoting a computer-generated Document Identification Number, so long as the assessment order is referenced by such a number in any manner. Its date, 1 October 2019, is the date from which the Department's own Document Identification Number regime operated. Section 153(10) and section 153B(1A) are a pair and they are not about reopening at all. They fix the moment at which a draft assessment order under section 144C(1) may be made. The draft may be made at any time up to the outer time limit for the assessment, reassessment or recomputation itself — in section 153(10), the limit in sub-sections (1) to (4) of section 153; in section 153B(1A), the limit in section 153B. Two things follow. The draft order is still bound by the outer limit. What is not bound by it is everything that happens afterwards — the objections, the Dispute Resolution Panel's directions and the final order — because the clarification is that making the draft at the very edge of the limit is enough. That is what the words “and shall always be deemed to have been made” are doing, and it is why they carry dates in 2009 rather than 2026. Section 148(1) now carries a floor as well as a ceiling. The period the notice gives you cannot be less than thirty days from the date of the notice and cannot run beyond three months from the end of the month in which it was issued. That floor applies to notices issued on or after 30 March 2026 and to nothing earlier. It is the one change in this Act that helps the person who receives the notice. A floor of exactly this kind once stood in section 148 and was removed: the Year 2000 print of the section carries a footnote recording that the words “not being less than thirty days,” were omitted by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 1996 with retrospective effect from 1 April 1989. Thirty years on, it is back. Now what the Act did not do, which is as useful to know. Walking clauses 4 to 33, none of them amends section 147, section 148A, section 149, section 151, section 151A, section 152, section 153A, section 153C, section 153D, section 292B or section 292BB. The reopening clock in section 149 is unchanged. The sanction in section 151 is unchanged, including its split between the authorities competent within three years and beyond three years. Section 148A, which is where the show-cause and the order before the notice live, is unchanged. So the machinery of reopening is where it was; what has changed is who works it and how easily its paperwork can be attacked. Read as a whole, five of the six provisions are validating provisions cast as clarifications, and each carries a retrospective date matched to the thing it validates: 1 April 2021 for section 147A and section 292BC, the first year of the present reassessment scheme; 1 October 2019 for section 292BA, the start of the Document Identification Number regime; 1 April 2009 and 1 October 2009 for section 153(10) and section 153B(1A). None of them creates a charge, extends a time limit for issuing a notice, or reopens anything that is closed. What each of them does is take away a ground of attack in a proceeding that is still alive. That distinction — a retrospective law that removes a defence rather than imposing a liability — is the centre of the constitutional argument now before the Supreme Court.
Not applicable — this is a statement of the statutory text as enacted and as printed on the departmental section pages, with the amendment history taken from the clauses of the Finance Act, 2026 and from the footnote apparatus on those pages. No judgment is analysed here.
Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court or in section 151A or in any scheme framed thereunder, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified that the Assessing Officer for the purposes of sections 148 and 148A shall mean and shall always be deemed to have meant to be an Assessing Officer other than the National Faceless Assessment Centre or any assessment unit referred to in sub-section (3) of section 144B.
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Handle my notice → Ask a CA on WhatsAppThe Finance Act, 2026 (No. 4 of 2026), assented to on 30 March 2026, amended the Income-tax Act, 1961 through clauses 4 to 33, and six of those clauses are about assessment and reassessment. Clause 9 inserted section 147A, deemed in force from 1 April 2021, which makes the Assessing Officer for sections 148 and 148A an officer other than the National Faceless Assessment Centre or a section 144B(3) assessment unit, notwithstanding any judgment, section 151A or any scheme under it; clause 33 inserted section 292BC, also deemed in force from 1 April 2021, which makes an approval in any assessment or reassessment administrative and supervisory in nature and immune to attack for insufficient reasons or a missing digital signature. Clause 10 gave the section 148 notice a thirty-day floor from 30 March 2026, clause 11 substituted section 150 from 1 February 2026, and clauses 12 and 13 inserted section 153(10) and section 153B(1A), reaching back to 2009, to fix when a draft order under section 144C(1) may be made. Sections 147, 148A, 149, 151 and 151A were not amended at all. Section 147A has since been struck down by the Punjab and Haryana High Court in Jyoti Sareen v. Union of India on 10 September 2026, and that judgment was stayed by the Supreme Court on 18 September 2026, which hears the appeal on 3 December 2026. This was decided by the CBDT Circulars & Instructions (Not applicable — statutory text) and bears on section 147A, section 292BC, section 148, section 153, section 153B, section 144C, section 150, section 292BA, section 148A, section 149, section 151, section 151A, section 144B, section 147, section 153A, section 292BB of the Income Tax Act 1961. It is reported as Sections 147A, 148(1), 153(10), 153B(1A), 292BA and 292BC of the Income-tax Act, 1961, as amended up to 2026 and as enacted in the Finance Act, 2026. Two of your standard reassessment grounds have been legislated away with effect from 1 April 2021, which is the first year of the present scheme, so they reach essentially every reopening now in the system. The first is the faceless point — that the jurisdictional officer could not issue the notice because the Scheme under section 151A required it to go through the faceless mechanism. Section 147A answers it directly. The second is the approval point — that the section 151 sanction was mechanical, or unsigned, or never properly communicated. Section 292BC answers that one, and it has had a fraction of the attention, so it is the one more likely to be sitting unaddressed in a pending appeal. Work out what that means for a live file. If your grounds of appeal are (a) notice by the jurisdictional officer, (b) mechanical approval, and (c) the additions on the merits, then after this Act ground (a) survives only as a constitutional challenge to section 147A, ground (b) survives only in the form section 292BC does not reach — no approval at all, or approval by an authority other than the one section 151 names, or an approval not granted electronically — and ground (c) is now doing most of the work. Any file where the merits were never argued because the technical ground looked unanswerable needs re-opening and re-arguing. The one change that runs the other way is the thirty-day floor in section 148(1). It applies only to notices issued on or after 30 March 2026, and it is the sort of defect that appears on the face of the notice, so it costs nothing to check. If it applies to you, the first step is this: Date your notice first. Section 147A and section 292BC reach 1 April 2021 onwards; the thirty-day floor in section 148(1) reaches only notices issued on or after 30 March 2026; the substituted section 150 runs from 1 February 2026. Then diarise 3 December 2026, when the Supreme Court hears the appeal against the judgment striking section 147A down.
The Finance Act, 2026 is Act No. 4 of 2026. It received the President's assent on 30 March 2026. Its clauses amending the Income-tax Act, 1961 run from clause 4 to clause 33, and six of them are the subject of this entry. Each text below is set out as it currently stands, and each was checked against the clause of the enacted Act that put it there. Section 147A, inserted after section 147 by clause 9, under the marginal note “Assessing Officer for purposes of sections 148 and 148A”. Clause 9 enacts: “After section 147 of the Income-tax Act, the following section shall be inserted and shall be deemed to have been inserted with effect from the 1st day of April, 2021, namely:” The section has no sub-sections and reads in full: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court or in section 151A or in any scheme framed thereunder, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified that the Assessing Officer for the purposes of sections 148 and 148A shall mean and shall always be deemed to have meant to be an Assessing Officer other than the National Faceless Assessment Centre or any assessment unit referred to in sub-section (3) of section 144B.” The departmental footnote is “Ins. by Act No. 4 of 2026, w.r.e.f. 1-4-2021.” Section 148(1), amended by clause 10. Clause 10 enacts: “In section 148 of the Income-tax Act, in sub-section (1), after the words “specified in the notice,” the words “not being less than thirty days from the date of such notice but” shall be inserted and shall be deemed to have been inserted with effect from the 30th day of March, 2026.” Before that insertion the sub-section required the officer to issue a notice “requiring him to furnish, within such period as may be specified in the notice, not exceeding three months from the end of the month in which such notice is issued, a return of his income”. It now reads “requiring him to furnish, within such period as may be specified in the notice, not being less than thirty days from the date of such notice but not exceeding three months from the end of the month in which such notice is issued, a return of his income”. The footnote on the current printing is “Ins. by Act No. 4 of 2026, w.e.f. 30-3-2026.” Section 150, substituted by clause 11 and deemed substituted with effect from 1 February 2026. That substitution has its own entry in this library and is not repeated here; in short it splits sub-section (1) into an authority limb and a court limb, adds a second measuring moment to sub-section (2), and creates a sub-section (3) giving the section 148 notice an outer date of its own — three months from the end of the quarter in which the certified copy of the order reaches the jurisdictional Principal Commissioner or Commissioner. Section 153(10), inserted by clause 12 after sub-section (9) and deemed inserted with effect from 1 April 2009: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified that in terms of provisions of sub-sections (1) to (4), the draft of the proposed order of assessment referred to in sub-section (1) of section 144C shall be made, and shall always be deemed to have been made, at any time up to the time limit of assessment, reassessment or recomputation referred to in the said sub-sections.” Footnote: “Ins. by Act No. 4 of 2026, w.r.e.f. 1-4-2009.” Section 153B(1A), inserted by clause 13 after sub-section (1) and deemed inserted with effect from 1 October 2009, in the same terms adapted to the search time limits: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified that in terms of provisions of this section, the draft of the proposed order of assessment referred to in sub-section (1) of section 144C shall be made, and shall always be deemed to have been made, at any time up to the time limit of assessment, reassessment or recomputation referred to in this section.” Footnote: “Ins. by Act No. 4 of 2026, w.r.e.f. 1-10-2009.” Section 292BC, inserted by clause 33 after section 292BB and deemed inserted with effect from 1 April 2021, under the marginal note “Circumstances in which approvals by income-tax authority not to be invalid”: “Notwithstanding anything contained in this Act or in any judgment, order or decree of any Court, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified that any approval given by an income-tax authority in relation to any assessment, reassessment or recomputation proceedings under this Act shall be deemed to be administrative and supervisory in nature and shall not be invalid or shall not be deemed to be invalid by reason of any insufficiency of the reasons recorded or by reason of any defect in the form or manner of its authentication or communication including whether digital signature have been appended to such approval or not, where such approval is granted electronically.” Footnote: “Ins. by Act No. 4 of 2026, w.r.e.f. 1-4-2021.” Section 292BA, inserted by clause 32 after section 292B and deemed inserted with effect from 1 October 2019: “Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified for the purposes of section 292B that no assessment under any of the provisions of this Act shall be invalid or shall be deemed to have been invalid on the ground of any mistake, defect or omission in respect of quoting of a computer generated Document Identification Number, if the assessment order is referenced by such number in any manner.” One more clause in the same part is worth naming because sections 153(10) and 153B(1A) do not work without it. Clause 8 amends section 144C, inserting sub-sections (4A) and (13A) with effect from 1 April 2009 and sub-sections (4B) and (13B) with effect from 1 October 2009. Sub-section (4A) reads: "Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court, or section 153, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified for the purposes of sub-section (4) that where a draft of the proposed order of assessment under sub-section (1) is forwarded within the time period allowed under section 153, further time period available to the Assessing Officer to complete the assessment under sub-section (3) shall be governed and shall always be deemed to have been governed by the provisions of sub-section (4)." Sub-section (4B) is in the same terms with section 153B in place of section 153. Sub-section (13A) is the same idea for sub-section (13): where the draft is forwarded within the section 153 time, the time available under sub-section (13) to pass the order on receipt of the Panel's direction "shall be governed and shall always be deemed to have been governed by the provisions of sub-sections (12) and (13)". Sub-section (13B) is (13A) with section 153B. So the four sub-sections work from the other end to the same result as sections 153(10) and 153B(1A): once the draft order has gone out in time, the section 144C clocks govern everything after it. Clause 7 makes a small change with a wide reach: in section 144B(6)(i)(b) the words “by affixing digital signature” are replaced by “by way of an electronic communication”, deemed substituted with effect from 1 April 2022. The matter was decided on 2026-03-30 by the CBDT Circulars & Instructions (Not applicable — statutory text). On those facts the CBDT Circulars & Instructions held as follows. Take the six provisions one at a time, because they do quite different things and only two of them are about jurisdiction. Section 147A settles who may issue a notice under section 148 or section 148A. It is an Assessing Officer who is neither the National Faceless Assessment Centre nor an assessment unit constituted under section 144B(3). The exclusion is disjunctive, so the officer must be outside both. The section says so notwithstanding a judgment, order or decree of any court, notwithstanding section 151A, and notwithstanding any scheme framed under section 151A — which is the Scheme notified on 29 March 2022 that the whole dispute was about. It does not repeal section 151A; it overrides it for the purposes of sections 148 and 148A and leaves it standing for everything else. It does not touch what section 144B does once the assessment is under way. Its operative formula is “for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified”, and its date is 1 April 2021, the first day of the present reassessment scheme. Section 292BC settles what an approval has to look like. Any approval by an income-tax authority in an assessment, reassessment or recomputation is deemed administrative and supervisory in nature, and is not invalid for insufficiency of the reasons recorded, or for a defect in the form or manner of its authentication or communication, including whether or not a digital signature was appended, where the approval is granted electronically. In practice that is aimed at the sanction under section 151. Read its edges. It cures a defective approval; it does not supply one that was never given. It says nothing about approval by an authority other than the one section 151 names. And it works only where the approval was granted electronically — the closing words of the section are a condition, not decoration. Section 292BA is the same technique applied to the Document Identification Number. An assessment is not invalid for a mistake, defect or omission in quoting a computer-generated Document Identification Number, so long as the assessment order is referenced by such a number in any manner. Its date, 1 October 2019, is the date from which the Department's own Document Identification Number regime operated. Section 153(10) and section 153B(1A) are a pair and they are not about reopening at all. They fix the moment at which a draft assessment order under section 144C(1) may be made. The draft may be made at any time up to the outer time limit for the assessment, reassessment or recomputation itself — in section 153(10), the limit in sub-sections (1) to (4) of section 153; in section 153B(1A), the limit in section 153B. Two things follow. The draft order is still bound by the outer limit. What is not bound by it is everything that happens afterwards — the objections, the Dispute Resolution Panel's directions and the final order — because the clarification is that making the draft at the very edge of the limit is enough. That is what the words “and shall always be deemed to have been made” are doing, and it is why they carry dates in 2009 rather than 2026. Section 148(1) now carries a floor as well as a ceiling. The period the notice gives you cannot be less than thirty days from the date of the notice and cannot run beyond three months from the end of the month in which it was issued. That floor applies to notices issued on or after 30 March 2026 and to nothing earlier. It is the one change in this Act that helps the person who receives the notice. A floor of exactly this kind once stood in section 148 and was removed: the Year 2000 print of the section carries a footnote recording that the words “not being less than thirty days,” were omitted by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 1996 with retrospective effect from 1 April 1989. Thirty years on, it is back. Now what the Act did not do, which is as useful to know. Walking clauses 4 to 33, none of them amends section 147, section 148A, section 149, section 151, section 151A, section 152, section 153A, section 153C, section 153D, section 292B or section 292BB. The reopening clock in section 149 is unchanged. The sanction in section 151 is unchanged, including its split between the authorities competent within three years and beyond three years. Section 148A, which is where the show-cause and the order before the notice live, is unchanged. So the machinery of reopening is where it was; what has changed is who works it and how easily its paperwork can be attacked. Read as a whole, five of the six provisions are validating provisions cast as clarifications, and each carries a retrospective date matched to the thing it validates: 1 April 2021 for section 147A and section 292BC, the first year of the present reassessment scheme; 1 October 2019 for section 292BA, the start of the Document Identification Number regime; 1 April 2009 and 1 October 2009 for section 153(10) and section 153B(1A). None of them creates a charge, extends a time limit for issuing a notice, or reopens anything that is closed. What each of them does is take away a ground of attack in a proceeding that is still alive. That distinction — a retrospective law that removes a defence rather than imposing a liability — is the centre of the constitutional argument now before the Supreme Court.
Not applicable — this is a statement of the statutory text as enacted and as printed on the departmental section pages, with the amendment history taken from the clauses of the Finance Act, 2026 and from the footnote apparatus on those pages. No judgment is analysed here. In the words reproduced by the source cited on this page: "Notwithstanding anything contained in any judgment, order or decree of any court or in section 151A or in any scheme framed thereunder, for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified that the Assessing Officer for the purposes of sections 148 and 148A shall mean and shall always be deemed to have meant to be an Assessing Officer other than the National Faceless Assessment Centre or any assessment unit referred to in sub-section (3) of section 144B."
It was decided by the CBDT Circulars & Instructions on 2026-03-30 and is reported as Sections 147A, 148(1), 153(10), 153B(1A), 292BA and 292BC of the Income-tax Act, 1961, as amended up to 2026 and as enacted in the Finance Act, 2026. Binding on the department, not on the assessee or the courts. An assessee may rely on a circular that is beneficial to them. A CBDT circular or instruction binds officers of the department but not the assessee and not the courts. Where a circular helps you, you may hold the department to it. Where it hurts you, it cannot override the Act or a judgment. On section 147A, section 292BC, section 148, section 153, section 153B, section 144C, section 150, section 292BA, section 148A, section 149, section 151, section 151A, section 144B, section 147, section 153A, section 292BB, the practical question is whether the facts of your own notice match the facts of this case closely enough for the same rule to apply.
It cuts both ways and is cited by both sides. Take the six provisions one at a time, because they do quite different things and only two of them are about jurisdiction. Section 147A settles who may issue a notice under section 148 or section 148A. It is an Assessing Officer who is neither the National Faceless Assessment Centre nor an assessment unit constituted under section 144B(3). The exclusion is disjunctive, so the officer must be outside both. The section says so notwithstanding a judgment, order or decree of any court, notwithstanding section 151A, and notwithstanding any scheme framed under section 151A — which is the Scheme notified on 29 March 2022 that the whole dispute was about. It does not repeal section 151A; it overrides it for the purposes of sections 148 and 148A and leaves it standing for everything else. It does not touch what section 144B does once the assessment is under way. Its operative formula is “for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified”, and its date is 1 April 2021, the first day of the present reassessment scheme. Section 292BC settles what an approval has to look like. Any approval by an income-tax authority in an assessment, reassessment or recomputation is deemed administrative and supervisory in nature, and is not invalid for insufficiency of the reasons recorded, or for a defect in the form or manner of its authentication or communication, including whether or not a digital signature was appended, where the approval is granted electronically. In practice that is aimed at the sanction under section 151. Read its edges. It cures a defective approval; it does not supply one that was never given. It says nothing about approval by an authority other than the one section 151 names. And it works only where the approval was granted electronically — the closing words of the section are a condition, not decoration. Section 292BA is the same technique applied to the Document Identification Number. An assessment is not invalid for a mistake, defect or omission in quoting a computer-generated Document Identification Number, so long as the assessment order is referenced by such a number in any manner. Its date, 1 October 2019, is the date from which the Department's own Document Identification Number regime operated. Section 153(10) and section 153B(1A) are a pair and they are not about reopening at all. They fix the moment at which a draft assessment order under section 144C(1) may be made. The draft may be made at any time up to the outer time limit for the assessment, reassessment or recomputation itself — in section 153(10), the limit in sub-sections (1) to (4) of section 153; in section 153B(1A), the limit in section 153B. Two things follow. The draft order is still bound by the outer limit. What is not bound by it is everything that happens afterwards — the objections, the Dispute Resolution Panel's directions and the final order — because the clarification is that making the draft at the very edge of the limit is enough. That is what the words “and shall always be deemed to have been made” are doing, and it is why they carry dates in 2009 rather than 2026. Section 148(1) now carries a floor as well as a ceiling. The period the notice gives you cannot be less than thirty days from the date of the notice and cannot run beyond three months from the end of the month in which it was issued. That floor applies to notices issued on or after 30 March 2026 and to nothing earlier. It is the one change in this Act that helps the person who receives the notice. A floor of exactly this kind once stood in section 148 and was removed: the Year 2000 print of the section carries a footnote recording that the words “not being less than thirty days,” were omitted by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 1996 with retrospective effect from 1 April 1989. Thirty years on, it is back. Now what the Act did not do, which is as useful to know. Walking clauses 4 to 33, none of them amends section 147, section 148A, section 149, section 151, section 151A, section 152, section 153A, section 153C, section 153D, section 292B or section 292BB. The reopening clock in section 149 is unchanged. The sanction in section 151 is unchanged, including its split between the authorities competent within three years and beyond three years. Section 148A, which is where the show-cause and the order before the notice live, is unchanged. So the machinery of reopening is where it was; what has changed is who works it and how easily its paperwork can be attacked. Read as a whole, five of the six provisions are validating provisions cast as clarifications, and each carries a retrospective date matched to the thing it validates: 1 April 2021 for section 147A and section 292BC, the first year of the present reassessment scheme; 1 October 2019 for section 292BA, the start of the Document Identification Number regime; 1 April 2009 and 1 October 2009 for section 153(10) and section 153B(1A). None of them creates a charge, extends a time limit for issuing a notice, or reopens anything that is closed. What each of them does is take away a ground of attack in a proceeding that is still alive. That distinction — a retrospective law that removes a defence rather than imposing a liability — is the centre of the constitutional argument now before the Supreme Court. It arises in Reassessment & Reopening, Assessment & Scrutiny and Faceless Assessment & Appeals matters, on section 147A, section 292BC, section 148, section 153, section 153B, section 144C, section 150, section 292BA, section 148A, section 149, section 151, section 151A, section 144B, section 147, section 153A, section 292BB of the Income Tax Act 1961, and was decided by Not applicable — statutory text. Before relying on it, read the source linked on this page and check whether it has since been distinguished, overruled or overtaken by an amendment to the Income Tax Act. In practice the steps that follow from it are these. Re-read your grounds of appeal against section 292BC before you argue that the section 151 approval was mechanical or unsigned, and plead instead the things it does not reach — that no approval was obtained, that it came from the wrong authority, or that it was not granted electronically at all. Do not plead section 151A as a construction point any more. If the faceless ground is worth keeping it has to be pleaded as a challenge to the validity and retrospectivity of section 147A. Check the period given in a section 148 notice issued on or after 30 March 2026 against both limits — at least thirty days from the date of the notice, and not beyond three months from the end of the month of issue. In a transfer pricing or foreign company case, stop arguing that the final order under section 144C(13) had to be within the section 153 or section 153B date. Sections 153(10) and 153B(1A) say the draft order is what has to be within it. Check the draft order's date instead. Do not assume section 149 or section 151 moved. They did not, and a reply that says they did will be corrected by the officer. Where you are relying on a decision that predates this Act, check whether the provision it turned on is one of the six. A decision on the faceless point or on mechanical approval given before March 2026 was decided on a statute that no longer reads that way.
Under appeal, and the appeal has not been decided. What is under appeal is not this statement of the law but section 147A itself, and the appeal is in the Supreme Court. Take the two apart. The statutory text set out on this page is current. Section 147A, section 292BC, section 292BA, section 153(10) and section 153B(1A) are all on the statute book, the amendment to section 148(1) is in force, and each was read both on the current printing of that section and in the corresponding clause of the enacted Finance Act, 2026. The two give the same words. Nothing on this page has been superseded by a later amendment. The validity of section 147A is a different question, and it has now been answered once. On 10 April 2026, in Income Tax Officer, Ward 2(1), Chandigarh v. Tej Partap Singh, the Supreme Court set aside the High Court judgments that had quashed reassessment notices issued by jurisdictional officers, remitted them so that section 147A could be challenged, and recorded that it had not expressed any opinion on the validity, scope, effect, retrospectivity or applicability of the amended provisions. On 10 September 2026 the Punjab and Haryana High Court decided that challenge in Jyoti Sareen v. Union of India, CWP No. 15791 of 2024, and struck section 147A down. On 18 September 2026 the Supreme Court granted leave and stayed that judgment in Union of India v. Bharat Industrial Enterprises Pvt. Ltd., SLP(C) No. 33196 of 2026, “on the condition that the assessment and reassessment proceedings shall not proceed further till the final disposal of the main matter”, and fixed the appeal for final hearing on 3 December 2026. So section 147A operates today, because the only judgment against it is stayed. That judgment is suspended, not gone. The Supreme Court has decided nothing on the merits. The date that governs planning is 3 December 2026, not the 30 September 2026 the April order asked the High Courts to aim at. No High Court decision upholding section 147A was found. The other five provisions described here are not, so far as was found, the subject of any decided challenge — but section 292BC carries the same retrospective date and the same clarificatory form as section 147A, so a ruling on one may not leave the other untouched. No source could be cited for that finding. Checking whether an authority still stands matters as much as knowing what it held: a decision may be overruled on one point and survive on another, or the provision it interprets may have been amended since. Read the source and the editor's note on this page before relying on it in a reply to an Assessing Officer or in an appeal.
Every provision quoted on this page was read on two differently published sources, and the two agree word for word. Section 147A was read three ways: on the current printing of the section, which prints the Income-tax Act, 1961 and carries a footnote crediting Act No. 4 of 2026 with retrospective effect from 1 April 2021; in clause 9 of the enacted Finance Act, 2026; and on a separate print of clause 9 itself, headed “Insertion of new section 147A”. All three are identical, down to the phrase “shall mean and shall always be deemed to have meant to be”. Section 292BC was read twice; the Act's copy breaks off in the closing words and the section page supplies them, and the two agree on everything both carry. The amendment to section 148(1) is carried by three readings. The current printing of section 148 shows the inserted words in place, with a footnote crediting Act No. 4 of 2026 with effect from 30 March 2026. The immediately preceding printing shows the same sentence without them, which is the clearest evidence of what the clause changed and from what. Clause 10 states the insertion in its own terms. It is corroborated from a fourth direction: the same Finance Act put the same thirty-day floor into section 280(1)(c) of the Income-tax Act, 2025, and the page for that section prints, beneath the new clause, the exact words the clause replaced. Sections 153(10) and 153B(1A) were read on the current printings of their sections, each with its own footnote, and the 2022 and 2021 printings of section 153B were read to confirm that no sub-section (1A) stood there before. The clause list running from clause 4 to clause 33 was walked in the enacted Act, which is the basis for the statement that sections 147, 148A, 149, 151, 151A, 152, 153A, 153C, 153D, 292B and 292BB are unamended. The judgments named in the validity note were read in the courts' own texts, and the operative words of the Supreme Court's order of 10 April 2026 were checked a second time against the Punjab and Haryana High Court's judgment, which sets them out. What was not read. Sub-sections (4A), (4B), (13A) and (13B) of section 144C, inserted by section 8 of the same Act, are set out on this page, (4A) in its enacted words and the other three in their effect; each turns on the draft order having been forwarded within the section 153 or section 153B time. The concluding declaration in Jyoti Sareen was not reached either, and is therefore neither quoted nor paraphrased. This library shows the verification state of every entry openly. This entry has not yet been read in full by a chartered accountant. The summary reflects the sources listed on this page. Read the source before you rely on it in a reply to an Assessing Officer or in an appeal before the Commissioner (Appeals) or the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal.
Take the six provisions one at a time, because they do quite different things and only two of them are about jurisdiction. Section 147A settles who may issue a notice under section 148 or section 148A. It is an Assessing Officer who is neither the National Faceless Assessment Centre nor an assessment unit constituted under section 144B(3). The exclusion is disjunctive, so the officer must be outside both. The section says so notwithstanding a judgment, order or decree of any court, notwithstanding section 151A, and notwithstanding any scheme framed under section 151A — which is the Scheme notified on 29 March 2022 that the whole dispute was about. It does not repeal section 151A; it overrides it for the purposes of sections 148 and 148A and leaves it standing for everything else. It does not touch what section 144B does once the assessment is under way. Its operative formula is “for the removal of doubts, it is hereby clarified”, and its date is 1 April 2021, the first day of the present reassessment scheme. Section 292BC settles what an approval has to look like. Any approval by an income-tax authority in an assessment, reassessment or recomputation is deemed administrative and supervisory in nature, and is not invalid for insufficiency of the reasons recorded, or for a defect in the form or manner of its authentication or communication, including whether or not a digital signature was appended, where the approval is granted electronically. In practice that is aimed at the sanction under section 151. Read its edges. It cures a defective approval; it does not supply one that was never given. It says nothing about approval by an authority other than the one section 151 names. And it works only where the approval was granted electronically — the closing words of the section are a condition, not decoration. Section 292BA is the same technique applied to the Document Identification Number. An assessment is not invalid for a mistake, defect or omission in quoting a computer-generated Document Identification Number, so long as the assessment order is referenced by such a number in any manner. Its date, 1 October 2019, is the date from which the Department's own Document Identification Number regime operated. Section 153(10) and section 153B(1A) are a pair and they are not about reopening at all. They fix the moment at which a draft assessment order under section 144C(1) may be made. The draft may be made at any time up to the outer time limit for the assessment, reassessment or recomputation itself — in section 153(10), the limit in sub-sections (1) to (4) of section 153; in section 153B(1A), the limit in section 153B. Two things follow. The draft order is still bound by the outer limit. What is not bound by it is everything that happens afterwards — the objections, the Dispute Resolution Panel's directions and the final order — because the clarification is that making the draft at the very edge of the limit is enough. That is what the words “and shall always be deemed to have been made” are doing, and it is why they carry dates in 2009 rather than 2026. Section 148(1) now carries a floor as well as a ceiling. The period the notice gives you cannot be less than thirty days from the date of the notice and cannot run beyond three months from the end of the month in which it was issued. That floor applies to notices issued on or after 30 March 2026 and to nothing earlier. It is the one change in this Act that helps the person who receives the notice. A floor of exactly this kind once stood in section 148 and was removed: the Year 2000 print of the section carries a footnote recording that the words “not being less than thirty days,” were omitted by the Finance (No. 2) Act, 1996 with retrospective effect from 1 April 1989. Thirty years on, it is back. Now what the Act did not do, which is as useful to know. Walking clauses 4 to 33, none of them amends section 147, section 148A, section 149, section 151, section 151A, section 152, section 153A, section 153C, section 153D, section 292B or section 292BB. The reopening clock in section 149 is unchanged. The sanction in section 151 is unchanged, including its split between the authorities competent within three years and beyond three years. Section 148A, which is where the show-cause and the order before the notice live, is unchanged. So the machinery of reopening is where it was; what has changed is who works it and how easily its paperwork can be attacked. Read as a whole, five of the six provisions are validating provisions cast as clarifications, and each carries a retrospective date matched to the thing it validates: 1 April 2021 for section 147A and section 292BC, the first year of the present reassessment scheme; 1 October 2019 for section 292BA, the start of the Document Identification Number regime; 1 April 2009 and 1 October 2009 for section 153(10) and section 153B(1A). None of them creates a charge, extends a time limit for issuing a notice, or reopens anything that is closed. What each of them does is take away a ground of attack in a proceeding that is still alive. That distinction — a retrospective law that removes a defence rather than imposing a liability — is the centre of the constitutional argument now before the Supreme Court.
TaxSphere, “Statutory position — the Finance Act, 2026 and reassessment: s.147A, s.292BC, the thirty-day floor in s.148(1), and ss.153(10) and 153B(1A)”, https://taxnotice.vittsphere.com/caselaw/case/statutory-position-147a-and-292bc-how-the-finance-act-2026-rewrote-the-reassessment-machinery-with-retrospective-effect-from-2021/ (validity last checked 2026-09-23)
The judgment itself is a government work and may be quoted freely. The summary, the validity note and the reasoning on this page are this library's own writing: quote them with attribution, and please do not present either as the words of the court — this page keeps the two apart and so should a quotation of it.
Every entry in this library links to where it was found, so you can check it yourself rather than take our word for it.
The order under section 148A(d) rejects everything I said and the section 148 notice has followed. Can I take it straight to the High Court?
The High Court quashed my s.148 notice because the ward officer issued it instead of the faceless unit. Does that judgment still stand?
My reassessment for an old year was restarted in 2022 on the strength of a Board instruction rather than a fresh notice. What does that instruction actually say, and how much of it is the Supreme Court's?
The Supreme Court remitted my JAO reassessment case and gave four weeks to amend. Will the High Court actually let me amend to challenge s.147A?
