We paid the booking amount by UPI, not by cheque. Does that satisfy the second proviso?
Yes, if the payment was made on or after 1 September 2019. Rule 6ABBA prescribes eight electronic modes - credit card, debit card, net banking, IMPS, UPI, RTGS, NEFT and BHIM Aadhaar Pay - and it does so expressly for the second proviso to s.50C(1) and the second proviso to s.56(2)(x)(b), among other provisions. Anything outside the rule and outside the three modes named in the section itself does not qualify.
The second proviso in each of these sections allows the agreement-date value to be used only where the consideration, or a part of it, was paid "by way of an account payee cheque or an account payee bank draft or by use of electronic clearing system through a bank account or through such other electronic mode as may be prescribed", on or before the date of the agreement. Three modes are named in the section. The fourth is left to the rules, and the rule is Rule 6ABBA.
The rule opens by naming the provisions it serves: "The following shall be the other electronic modes for the purposes of clause (d) of first proviso to section 13A, clause (f) of sub-section (8) of section 35AD, sub-section (3), sub-section (3A), proviso to sub-section (3A) and sub-section (4) of section 40A, second proviso to clause (l) of section 43, sub-section (4) of section 43CA, proviso to sub-section (1) of section 44AD, second proviso to sub-section (1) of section 50C, second proviso to sub-clause (b) of clause (x) of sub-section (2) of section 56, clause (b) of first proviso of clause (i) of Explanation to section 80JJAA, section 269SS, section 269ST and section 269T". Both sides of a property transaction are therefore covered by the same list. The modes are: credit card; debit card; net banking; IMPS (Immediate Payment Service); UPI (Unified Payment Interface); RTGS (Real Time Gross Settlement); NEFT (National Electronic Funds Transfer); and BHIM (Bharat Interface for Money) Aadhaar Pay.
The date matters. The department's page records the rule as inserted by the Income-tax (Third Amendment) Rules, 2020 with retrospective effect from 1 September 2019, and the commentary gives the instrument as Notification No. 8/2020 dated 29 January 2020. For a payment made before 1 September 2019 the safe ground is the three modes written into the section itself, and on an old booking that usually means producing the counterfoil and the bank statement for an account payee cheque.
What is not on the list is as important as what is. Cash is not, and the corpus entry on which date fixes the stamp duty value records that a cash advance forfeits the benefit of the first proviso. A bearer or self cheque is not an account payee cheque. A demand draft that is not an account payee draft is not within the section. A cheque handed over on the agreement date but dated later, or cleared later, raises a question the pages read do not answer - the section speaks of the amount having "been paid" on or before the date of the agreement, so the safer record is a transfer that is complete on or before that date.
Do not confuse this rule with Rule 119AA. That rule prescribes the modes a business with turnover above the s.269SU limit must offer its customers, and the library's entry on CBDT Circular No. 32/2019 deals with it. Rule 6ABBA answers a different question: whether a payment you made is of a kind the Act recognises.
Evidence, not description, decides these cases. What the assessment record needs is a bank statement or a UPI or NEFT reference showing the amount, the date and the payee, matched to the allotment letter or agreement of the same or an earlier date. A ledger entry or a receipt from the builder is not the same thing.
Buyers now pay booking amounts by UPI or net banking as a matter of course, and an officer who reads only the three modes named in the section can refuse the agreement-date value on the footing that no cheque was issued. The rule answers that in terms. It also fixes the outer date: for anything before 1 September 2019 the electronic modes in the rule are not available and the section's own three modes have to be shown.
You took a cash loan and now face penalty equal to the whole amount. Is there any relief?
The assessment in which the s.271E satisfaction was recorded has been set aside. Can the penalty stand?
The shares are listed but locked in. Do I value them at the market quotation?
Our family settled a property dispute orally and only filed a memorandum with the authorities. Someone now says the settlement is void because it was never registered. Is it?
The reopening notice says my sale below circle rate attracts section 50C, but I am a developer and the floor sold was stock in trade, so section 50C cannot apply. Does that error destroy the notice?
The Commissioner has set aside my assessment under section 263 saying the Assessing Officer did not examine an issue properly — can he do that without deciding the issue himself?
The Assessing Officer sent my property to the Departmental Valuation Officer because he thought my sale price and my 1981 cost were both wrong — was he entitled to?
Money moves both ways between me and my company on a current account. Is that a loan under 269SS?
Every page in this library links to what it was written from, so you can check it rather than take our word for it.