Audit reports and accountants' reports Became Form 6

Form 3AE

Audit Report under section * 35D(4)/35E(6) of the Income-tax Act, 1961

What this form is

Form 3AE belongs to the regime of the Income-tax Act, 1961. The same ground is now covered by Form 6 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026. It is an audit report: an accountant examines something and reports on it in the department’s own words, in the department’s own boxes. The assessee does not write this one. An accountant signs it, and the assessee files what the accountant has signed.

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
section 35D of the 1961 Act	section 44
section 35E of the 1961 Act	section 51

Rules of the 2026 Rules that work the same section. rule 27 (Form of statement to be furnished regarding certain preliminary), rule 28 (Form of audit report for claiming deduction for certain preliminary). This is our own matching — we have paired the section the form names with the rules whose headings name that same section. The department has not said that any of these rules prescribes this form.

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 6	Audit Report for claiming deduction for certain preliminary expenses under section 44 or expenditure for prospecting certain minerals under section 51

Where you meet it

You meet it in the run-up to the filing date, when a claim in the return needs an accountant’s report behind it. The report goes in separately from the return, and it usually has to be in before the return is.

On the same provision

Decisions in this library that turn on the same provision of the 1961 Act that this form names. They are about the provision, not about the form; a case is listed here because it argues the section, and none of them is authority on how the form itself is to be filled in.

Near it

Other forms we have put in the same group — audit reports and accountants' reports.

Form 3AC, Form 3AD, Form 3CA, Form 3CB, Form 3CD, Form 3CE, Form 3CEA, Form 3CLA, Form 5BA, Form 6B, Form 6D, Form 10B

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.

Form 3AE — 1962 Rules (PDF) Fillable version Form 6 — 2026 Rules (PDF) All forms at the department

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.