An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, as F.No.225/195/2016-ITA-II, dated 9 September 2016. Issued under section 119.
An order of the Board under section 119 extending the due date for furnishing returns of income for assessment year 2016-17 in the case of taxpayers whose accounts are audited and who were required by section 139(1) to file by 30 September 2016. It was made because that date was also the last date for making a declaration under the Income Declaration Scheme, 2016, and the two fell on the same day. The order is short and does nothing else.
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 due date for furnishing such returns of income is extended from 30 September 2016 to 17 October 2016, in the case of taxpayers throughout India who are liable to furnish their income-tax return by that due date. The extension is expressed to be in exercise of the Board's powers under section 119, and its stated object is to remove inconvenience and to facilitate ease of compliance. Nothing is said about the Income Declaration Scheme date itself, which is only recited as the reason; nor about the date for furnishing the audit report, about interest, or about any other consequence that runs from the due date.
The last date for making declarations under the Income Declaration Scheme, 2016 was 30 September 2016. That was the same day on which taxpayers whose accounts are audited had to furnish their returns for assessment year 2016-17 under section 139(1). The same taxpayers and the same advisers were working to both dates at once. The Board extended the return date by about a fortnight so that the two obligations did not collide.
It binds the department, which must treat such a return filed up to 17 October 2016 as filed by the due date. It does not bind the assessee and it does not bind a court or the Tribunal. It reaches only taxpayers throughout India who were liable to furnish the return by 30 September 2016 for assessment year 2016-17.
Made in September 2016, before the original due date. It operates for assessment year 2016-17 only, and the extended due date is 17 October 2016 in place of 30 September 2016.
The order moves one date and no other. The Income Declaration Scheme date of 30 September 2016 is recited as the reason and is not itself extended. Taxpayers who were not liable to file by 30 September 2016 are outside it. And the order is silent on interest and on the other consequences that attach to the due date, so the extension cannot be read as curing them without more.
the last date of filing Income-tax returns by the tax payers whose accounts are audited and who are required to furnish the returns of income for Assessment Year 2016-17
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order F.No.225/195/2016-ITA-II, 9 September 2016. Read it in the department’s own PDF.
| Under the Income-tax Act, 1961 | Now, in the Income-tax Act, 2025 |
|---|---|
| section 139 | section 2, section 263, section 349 |
| section 119 | section 239 |
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I filed a return showing a loss after the due date but before any assessment was made. Can the officer refuse to determine the loss and refuse to let me carry it forward?
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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 day in the date line is garbled in the scan ('New Delhi, the 4° September, 2016'), so the date is taken from the department's own listing of 9 September 2016; the month and year are legible. The superscripts in '30% September' and '30t September' are scanning artefacts for 30th.