An order issued by the Central Board of Direct Taxes, as F. No. 225/155/2020/ITA-II, dated 26 October 2021. Issued under section 285BB read with rule 114-I(2).
An order of the Board under section 285BB read with sub-rule (2) of rule 114-I. Section 285BB requires the prescribed authority to upload an annual information statement in the prescribed form, and rule 114-I(2) lets the Board authorise the Director General of Income-tax (Systems) to include such other information as it directs. This order exercises that power, listing eight further classes of information to go into Form 26AS and fixing the time within which each is to be uploaded.
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 authorises the Director General of Income-tax (Systems) to upload in the annual information statement in Form 26AS, within three months from the end of the month in which the information is received, eight classes of information: foreign remittance information reported in Form 15CC; the information in Annexure II of the last quarter's Form 24Q statement of tax deducted at source; information appearing in another taxpayer's return of income; interest on an income-tax refund; information in Forms 61 and 61A where a PAN could be populated; off-market transactions reported by a depository or a registrar and transfer agent; dividend of a mutual fund reported by a registrar and transfer agent; and purchase of mutual fund units reported by a registrar and transfer agent. The Director General is to specify the procedures, formats and standards for uploading it.
Form 26AS began as a tax-credit statement and was being turned into a fuller picture of what the department already knows about a taxpayer, so that the return could be prepared against it and compliance improved without a notice. Each addition to that picture requires an order, because section 285BB and rule 114-I confine the statement to information the Board has directed be included. This order adds eight heads drawn from reporting the department was already receiving but not showing to the taxpayer.
The order binds the department: it obliges the Director General (Systems) to put the listed information into the statement within the stated period. It gives the taxpayer nothing to enforce and, importantly, imposes no duty on him. Information appearing in Form 26AS is not an assessment and not a finding, and neither the Tribunal nor a court is bound by it or by this order when the correctness of an entry is disputed.
Issued in October 2021. Each class of information is to be uploaded within three months from the end of the month in which it is received by the department. No end date is prescribed.
An entry in the annual information statement is the department's record of a report made by a third party, not a determination of income, and it is frequently wrong or duplicated, particularly for off-market transactions and mutual fund entries. Reconcile before relying on it. Note also the three-month lag, which means the statement may be incomplete when a return is being prepared close to the due date.
In exercise of powers conferred under section 285BB of the Income-tax Act, 1961 read with sub-rule (2) of Rule 114-I of the Income-tax Rules, 1962, the Central Board of Direct Taxes ('Board'), hereby authorizes the Director General of Income-tax (Systems)
— the Central Board of Direct Taxes, order F. No. 225/155/2020/ITA-II, 26 October 2021. Read it in the department’s own PDF.
| Under the Income-tax Act, 1961 | Now, in the Income-tax Act, 2025 |
|---|---|
| section 285BB | section 510 |
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 of the month was illegible in the text layer; the date is taken from the departmental listing. The file number was read from an imperfect text layer.