Registration, approval and notification Became Form 171
Form 39
Form of application for registration as authorised income- tax practitioner
What this form is
Form 39 belongs to the regime of the Income-tax Act, 1961. The same ground is now covered by Form 171 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026. It is an application. Nothing follows from filing it by itself; what follows is an order, and the order is what matters. 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 515 — Appearance by authorised representative |
What it became under the 2026 Rules
The description changed with the number, and the change is worth reading: the 2026 wording points at the Income-tax Act, 2025, and a great deal of what used to sit in a section of the 1961 Act now sits in a Schedule.
| Under the 2026 Rules | What the department calls it |
|---|
| Form 171 | Form of application for registration as authorised income-tax practitioner under section 515 |
Where you meet it
You meet it when something has to be sanctioned before it will work — a trust registered, a fund approved, a project notified. The approval is prospective and conditional; the conditions on the order are as much a part of it as the approval itself.
Near it
Other forms we have put in the same group — registration, approval and notification.
Form 3CF, Form 3CG, Form 3CH, Form 3CJ, Form 3CK, Form 3CL, Form 3CM, Form 3CN, Form 3CO, Form 3CP, Form 3CQ, Form 3CR
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.