An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, as F. No. 225/86/2019-ITA-II, dated 29 March 2019. Issued under section 119(1).
A short order under section 119(1) directing that the department's offices stay open over the weekend at the close of the financial year. 31 March 2019 was the last date for filing a belated or revised return for assessment year 2018-19 and it fell on a Sunday, with the Saturday before it also a closed holiday. The Board directs the offices, including the Aayakar Seva Kendras, to work normally on both days and to open extra counters where needed.
This is an order of the Board. An order is issued under a power the Act itself gives the Board — most often section 119, which lets it direct its own officers and, in the cases the section names, relax a requirement. Read the enabling words before deciding how far it reaches: the power is administrative, and it cannot rewrite the charge.
Income-tax offices throughout India, including the ASK Centres, are to remain open on 30 and 31 March 2019 during normal office hours. Where required, additional receipt counters are to be opened on those two days to make it easier for taxpayers to file. The reason is recorded on the face of the order: the last date for filing belated and revised returns for assessment year 2018-19 is 31 March 2019, and 30 and 31 March 2019 fall on a Saturday and a Sunday. The order is a working direction to the field and changes no date under the Act.
The last date under section 139 for a belated or revised return for assessment year 2018-19 was 31 March 2019 and could not be moved. That date fell on a Sunday and the preceding Saturday was also a holiday. Unless the offices were open, taxpayers filing over the counter and the department's own year-end work would both have been stranded. The Board therefore directed that the offices and the Seva Kendras work through the weekend.
The direction runs to the income-tax authorities and to no one else: it tells them to keep their offices open. It gives a taxpayer no extra time, because the statutory last date is untouched. The Board may order its own offices to work; it cannot by such an order alter a period fixed by the Act, and neither the Tribunal nor a court would read it as having done so.
30 and 31 March 2019. The statutory last date of 31 March 2019 for belated and revised returns for assessment year 2018-19 is unchanged.
Read this for what it is — an office-hours direction, not an extension. Anyone who missed 31 March 2019 takes no relief from it. The Board issues an order of this kind most years around the close of the financial year, with different dates each time, so do not carry the dates in this one across to another year.
Income Tax Offices throughout India (including the ASK Centres) shall remain open on 30th and 31st March, 2019 during normal office hours.
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order F. No. 225/86/2019-ITA-II, 29 March 2019. Read it in the department’s own PDF.
| Under the Income-tax Act, 1961 | Now, in the Income-tax Act, 2025 |
|---|---|
| section 119 | section 239 |
| section 139 | section 2, section 263, section 349 |
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What here is the Board’s and what is ours. The document is the Central Board of Direct Taxes’ own. Its number, its date and the words quoted above are reproduced from the Board’s own PDF, which is here. Everything else on this page is ours: the plain-English account of what the document is and what it does, the reading of which provision it turns on, the note on what to watch, and the choice of cases. Where our account and the document part, the document governs.
An order of the Board binds the department, not you and not a court. The Board writes to its own officers. An assessee may hold the department to an order or an instruction that helps him; the department cannot hold an assessee to one that hurts him, and the Tribunal and the courts decide the law for themselves. This is the most common mistake made with this material, and it is worth making twice: a direction of the Board is not a section of the Act.