Transfer pricing and cross-border tax New in 2026
Form 46 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026
Exercise of option for determination of arm‘s length price (ALP) under section 166(9)
What this form is
Form 46 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 is new. The department’s concordance shows no form of the 1961 regime behind it. It is a prescribed form, which means the Act or the Rules require this shape and no other. The assessee signs and files this himself.
Which provision requires it
Left, the provision as the department’s description names it. Right, where the same ground is covered now — taken from the department’s own section and rule concordances, not worked out by us.
| What the description names | Where it sits now |
|---|
| named in the 2026 description | section 166 — Reference to Transfer Pricing Officer |
What it is under the 2026 Rules
This form is new. The department’s concordance leaves the 1961 column empty for it, which means there is no earlier form it replaces and no older practice to read across from. Its number is Form 46, and the department describes it as: “Exercise of option for determination of arm‘s length price (ALP) under section 166(9)”.
Where you meet it
You meet it when money, a related party or a permanent establishment sits on the other side of a border. It usually has to be in place before the transaction, not after it, and the department reads it against the treaty as well as the Act.
Near it
Other forms we have put in the same group — transfer pricing and cross-border tax.
Form 3CEAA, Form 3CEAB, Form 3CEAC, Form 3CEAD, Form 3CEAE, Form 3CEB, Form 3CEC, Form 3CED, Form 3CEDA, Form 3CEEA, Form 3CEF, Form 3CEFA
Get the form
Published by the Income Tax Department. The link goes to their file, not a copy of it — a form is revised without notice and a stale copy is worse than none. Both are here because a notice, an order or a judgment may name either number.
What here is the department’s and what is ours. The form number, the sentence describing it, and the pairing of the old form with the form it became are all taken from the Income Tax Department’s own published forms concordance, and are reproduced as the department wrote them — including its abbreviations and its occasional typing errors. Everything else on this page is ours: the plain-English account of what the form is, the reading of which provision requires it, the grouping the form sits in, the note on where you meet it, and the selection of cases. The department has not said that this form serves that section; we have read that off the description and off its own section concordance, and we can be wrong. Before you rely on any of it, open the form.