Statements, returns and reporting Became Form 88
Form 46
Application for information under clause (b) of sub-section (1) of section 138 of the Income-tax Act, 1961
What this form is
Form 46 belongs to the regime of the Income-tax Act, 1961. The same ground is now covered by Form 88 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 138 of the 1961 Act | section 258 |
Rules of the 2026 Rules that work the same section. rule 155 (Disclosure of information related to assessees under section 258(2)). 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 88 | Application for information under section 258(2)(a) of the Act |
Where you meet it
You meet it as a recurring obligation with a date attached, generally unconnected to any tax being payable. Because nothing is owed, it is the one that gets forgotten, and the penalty for not filing runs by the day.
Near it
Other forms we have put in the same group — statements, returns and reporting.
Form 3AF, Form 3BB, Form 5C, Form 10, Form 10BBD, Form 10BD, Form 10IG, Form 10IH, Form 10II, Form 10IK, Form 26AS, Form 47
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.