An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, dated 7 October 2024. Issued under section 119.
An order of the Board under section 119, dated 7 October 2024. It follows Circular No. 02/2024 of 5 March 2024, by which trusts, institutions and funds that had filed their audit report for assessment year 2023-24 in the wrong form by 31 October 2023 were allowed to furnish it again in the applicable Form 10B or 10BB by 31 March 2024. This order gives those that still could not do so a further date.
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.
It records the position under Circular No. 02/2024, namely that trusts, institutions and funds which had furnished the audit report in Form 10B where Form 10BB was applicable, or the other way round, for assessment year 2023-24 by 31 October 2023, were permitted to furnish the report in the applicable form on or before 31 March 2024. It then records that in some cases such trusts, institutions and funds could not file the audit report in the correct prescribed form within that date. In exercise of the powers conferred by section 119, the Board further allows them to furnish the audit report in the applicable Form 10B or 10BB on or before 10 November 2024. The order states it issues with the approval of the competent authority.
The audit report is a condition of the exemption, and a report filed in the wrong form is treated as no report at all. A large number of trusts had filed in time but in the wrong form, which Circular No. 02/2024 had already addressed. Some of them still missed the corrected March deadline, and without a further extension they stood to lose exemption for assessment year 2023-24 on a purely formal defect.
Being an order under section 119, it directs the department to accept the report if furnished within the extended date. It obliges no trust to file, and confers a relaxation the trust may take or leave. Neither the Tribunal nor a court is bound by it, but an assessing officer cannot deny a trust the benefit of a relaxation his own Board has published.
Extends the date for furnishing the audit report in the applicable form for assessment year 2023-24 to 10 November 2024.
The relaxation is confined to those already covered by Circular No. 02/2024, that is, trusts that did file a report by 31 October 2023 but in the wrong form. A trust that filed nothing at all is not helped by this order and must look elsewhere. Confirm the form actually applicable before refiling, since a second wrong form gains nothing.
the CBDT in exercise of the powers conferred under section 119 of the Act, hereby further allows such trusts / institutions / funds to furnish such audit report in the applicable Form No. 10B / 10BB on or before 10th November, 2024.
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order, 7 October 2024. 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 |
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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 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 F. No. line did not extract legibly from the scan and has been left blank rather than guessed. The quoted paragraph has had plain scanning artefacts in the form numbers and the date corrected; the wording is otherwise as printed. The order does not itself cite the provision under which the audit report is required, so only section 119 is listed.