Registration, approval and notification Became Form 18
Form 3CN
Application for notification of affordable housing project as specified business under section 35AD
What this form is
Form 3CN belongs to the regime of the Income-tax Act, 1961. The same ground is now covered by Form 18 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 |
|---|
| section 35AD of the 1961 Act | section 46 |
Rules of the 2026 Rules that work the same section. rule 36 (Procedure for notification of an affordable housing project as a), rule 66 (Furnishing of audit report for claiming deduction under section 46 or). 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 18 | Application for notification of affordable housing project as specified business under section 46 |
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 3CO, Form 3CP, Form 3CQ, Form 3CR, Form 3CS
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.