An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, as F. No. 225/157/2019/ITA.II, dated 23 July 2019. Issued under section 119.
This is an order of the Central Board of Direct Taxes under section 119 of the Income-tax Act, 1961, dated 23 July 2019. For assessment year 2019-20 the due date under section 139(1) was 31 July 2019 for certain categories of taxpayers. The Board records that some taxpayers were facing difficulty in filing by that date, and extends it to 31 August 2019 for all taxpayers who were liable to file by the 31 July due date. It is a general extension given on the Board's own motion.
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.
In exercise of its powers under section 119, the Board extends the due date prescribed under section 139(1) for filing income-tax returns from 31 July 2019 to 31 August 2019 in the cases of all taxpayers who are liable to file their returns by that due date. The relief is unconditional and class-wide: no taxpayer need apply for it, show hardship or obtain an individual order. It moves the section 139(1) due date and nothing more, for assessment year 2019-20 only. The order says nothing about interest, nothing about the audit-case due date of 30 September, and nothing about any other compliance falling due in the same period.
It had been reported to the Board that some taxpayers were facing difficulties in filing their returns for assessment year 2019-20, for various reasons. The order names one in particular - the extension of the due date for issuing Form 16 for that year. An employee cannot ordinarily prepare his return until his employer has given him the Form 16, so a later Form 16 date compressed the window left before 31 July. The Board restored the window by moving the return due date by a month.
The order binds the department: a return filed by 31 August 2019 by a taxpayer it covers is a return filed by the due date, and no officer may say otherwise. It does not bind the taxpayer, and it does not bind a court or the Tribunal. It reaches every taxpayer whose section 139(1) due date for assessment year 2019-20 was 31 July 2019, and no one else.
Made 23 July 2019, for assessment year 2019-20. The due date of 31 July 2019 becomes 31 August 2019 for the taxpayers covered.
The order shifts a date and says nothing more; it is silent on interest and on the other consequences that attach to the original due date, and silence is not relief. Taxpayers whose due date was not 31 July 2019 - audit cases in particular - are untouched. The reason given is confined to filing difficulty and the Form 16 extension, so the order cannot be stretched to cover other grievances of that year.
The ‘due-date’ for filing income-tax returns for Assessment-Year 2019-20 is 31.07.2019 for certain categories of taxpayers.
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order F. No. 225/157/2019/ITA.II, 23 July 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.
What we could not settle. The superscripts on the dates are garbled in the scan - they print as '23" of July, 2019', '31° July, 2019' and '31% August, 2019' - but the day, month and year read clearly in each, and the date agrees with the department's listing of 23 July 2019. The F. No. prints as '225/157/2019/ITA.1I' and is read as ITA.II. Stray vertical rules from the scan appear at the start of several lines.