An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, as F. No. 299/22/2021-Dir (Inv. III), dated 28 September 2021. Issued under section 119(2)(b).
An order of the Board under clause (b) of sub-section (2) of section 119 dealing with taxpayers who lost the chance to go to the Settlement Commission when it ceased to operate. The Finance Act, 2021 wound up the Income-tax Settlement Commission with effect from 1st February, 2021 and put an Interim Board for Settlement in its place. This order lets a defined class of assessee file an application after that date and have it treated as a valid pending application.
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.
The Board permits an application for settlement to be filed before the Interim Board for Settlement where the assessee was eligible to file such an application on 31.01.2021 for the assessment years in question, and where the relevant assessment proceedings are pending on the date the application is filed. An application answering both requirements, filed after 31.01.2021 and before 30.09.2021, is to be treated as a valid pending application before the Interim Board. The order is framed as a relaxation to meet the hardship caused by the abrupt cessation of the Settlement Commission and by the difficulties of the pandemic period.
The Settlement Commission stopped receiving applications from 1st February, 2021, but the amendment came in the Finance Act, 2021 and took effect retrospectively from that date, so taxpayers who were eligible on 31st January, 2021 and were preparing an application found the door shut behind them without warning. Many were also constrained by the pandemic. Section 119(2)(b) allows the Board to admit an application after the time for it has passed to avoid genuine hardship, and this order uses that power.
The order binds the department: an application within its terms must be taken as a valid pending application before the Interim Board and cannot be rejected as out of time. It gives no wider right, and an assessee who was not eligible on 31.01.2021, or whose assessment was not pending when he applied, gains nothing. It does not bind the Tribunal or a court, which construe the Finance Act, 2021 and Chapter XIX-A themselves.
Issued 28th September, 2021. It covers applications filed after 31.01.2021 and before 30.09.2021, by assessees eligible to apply as on 31.01.2021, with the assessment pending on the date of the application.
Both conditions are cumulative and both are tested on stated dates: eligibility as on 31.01.2021 and pendency of the assessment on the day of filing. The window closed on 30.09.2021, so the order is now of historical rather than practical use, save where an application filed inside it is still being dealt with. Eligibility on 31.01.2021 means eligibility under Chapter XIX-A as it then stood.
were eligible to file application for settlement on 31.01.2021 for the assessment years for which the application is sought to be filed
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order F. No. 299/22/2021-Dir (Inv. III), 28 September 2021. 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 245C | no counterpart recorded |
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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 file number carried a trailing fragment that could not be read from the text layer.