Section 285BA

Section 285BA — the law in short

What the courts have decided on section 285BA, in one screen. Read this first; open an entry when you need the facts, the reasoning and the source.

• The Sub Registrar, Muktsar v Director of Income Tax (CIB) High CourtHelps departmentNo later treatment found
  Is there any High Court authority the department can use against me on a s.271FA penalty for filing Form 61A late?
  Yes, and it should be known before the appeal is filed. The Punjab and Haryana High Court dismissed a sub-registrar's appeal against a daily s.271FA penalty for late annual information returns, holding that no substantial question of law arose — including on the question, expressly raised, whether penalty is exigible in the absence of mens rea. But the judgment gives no reasoning of its own: it dismisses by following an earlier decision of the same Court in connected appeals decided on 21 July 2014.
• DCIT v Zaitoon Farouq Esmail ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  The officer has added the whole of a property purchase shown against my client's PAN in the AIS, although my client never bought it. Is a reported entry enough to sustain an addition?
  No. The Mumbai Bench dismissed the Revenue's appeal and upheld the deletion of a Rs 2.53 crore addition made on the strength of reported information alone, holding that the Assessing Officer is not expected to make an addition mathematically simply on the basis of information without verification of the facts. The decisive fact was that the names of the purchasers in the reported data were different persons and only the assessee's PAN had been tagged against them.
• Bangiya Gramin Vikash Bank v ITO, Ward 42(1), Berhampore ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  Our bank could not upload the statement of financial transactions on time because the core banking system was being migrated during a merger, and the I&CI wing has levied a per-day penalty under section 271FA. Is a technical failure a defence?
  Yes, on these facts. The Kolkata Bench held that an inability to generate the data required for Form 61/61A because the bank was migrating from one version of its core banking solution to another, in the course of a reorganisation and merger, is a reasonable cause, and directed deletion of a penalty of Rs 3,61,000 levied under section 271FA for the belated statement of financial transactions.
• Meet Forex Private Limited v Addl./JDIT (I&CI), New Delhi ITATHelps taxpayerNo later treatment found
  My client is a small money changer who never knew he had to file Form 61A. A penalty of eighty-one thousand rupees has been levied under s.271FA. Is ignorance of the requirement any answer?
  On these facts, yes. The Delhi Bench deleted the whole penalty, holding that the explanation of not filing the statement of financial transactions for lack of knowledge was bona fide, given that the assessee had only one transaction to report, and following two Kolkata decisions treating such a default as a technical or venial breach flowing from bona fide ignorance. The relief was outright deletion, not a remand.
• Guntur District Co-operative Central Bank Ltd v DIT ITATCuts both ways
  We had no reportable transactions and filed no SFT. Can they still levy penalty under 271FA?
  No, not for a year in which there was nothing to report. Section 285BA casts the filing obligation on a person who has registered or recorded a specified financial transaction during the financial year, so where no such transaction exists the duty to furnish the statement never arises and s.271FA has nothing to bite on. The burden is on the department to show that reportable transactions were in fact recorded before it can allege a failure.
• Statutory position — section 285BAA: the crypto-asset reporting entity's statement, and why section 115BBI is a different thing entirely CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  Our exchange has been told it is a 'reporting entity' for crypto-assets. What does section 285BAA actually require, and is section 115BBI part of the same regime?
  Section 285BAA, inserted by the Finance Act 2025 with effect from 1 April 2026, requires a prescribed reporting entity in respect of a crypto-asset to furnish information about transactions in such crypto-assets in a statement, for such period and within such time, form and manner and to such income-tax authority as prescribed. If the authority thinks the statement defective it must intimate the defect and allow thirty days or longer to rectify, failing which the Act applies as if inaccurate information had been furnished; if no statement is filed the authority may serve a notice requiring one within not more than thirty days; and a reporting entity that later discovers an inaccuracy must inform the authority and furnish the correct information within ten days. The Central Government may prescribe registration of reporting entities, the nature and manner of maintaining information, and the due diligence for identifying crypto-asset users and owners. Section 115BBI is NOT part of this regime: it is a thirty per cent charge on the 'specified income' of certain funds, trusts, universities and hospitals under s.10(23C) and s.11, and has nothing to do with virtual digital assets.
• CBDT Notification 19/2026 on crypto reporting CBDT Circulars & InstructionsHelps department
  Do I have to report my crypto holdings now, or does the exchange do it for me?
  The platform does. Reporting Crypto-Asset Service Providers — Indian exchanges, custodians, wallet providers, broker-dealer platforms and offshore providers servicing Indian users — must report crypto-asset transactions in Form 167 under rules 241 to 244. The compliance burden is placed on the platforms, not on individual investors.
• Statutory position — section 285BA, rule 114E and Form 61A: who must file the statement of financial transactions, and the section 271FA and 271FAA penalties CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  A notice says my client should have filed Form 61A and proposes a penalty of five hundred rupees a day. Who actually has to file, for what transactions, and how is the penalty computed?
  The statement of financial transactions is furnished under section 285BA(1) in Form No. 61A, and rule 114E(2) fixes both the reporting persons and the transactions in a table: for most reporters the threshold is ten lakh rupees in a financial year, for immovable property registered by a Registrar or Sub-Registrar it is thirty lakh rupees, and for a person liable to audit under section 44AB it is receipt of cash exceeding two lakh rupees for a sale of goods or services. The due date under rule 114E(5) is 31 May following the financial year. The penalty under section 271FA is five hundred rupees for every day of default, rising to one thousand rupees a day from the day after the time given in a notice under section 285BA(5) expires; section 271FAA adds fifty thousand rupees for an inaccurate statement, and, for a reporting financial institution, a further five thousand rupees for every inaccurate reportable account.
• Statutory position — section 285BB and rule 114-I: what the Annual Information Statement is, and what it is not CBDT Circulars & InstructionsCuts both ways
  The notice says an amount 'appears in your AIS' and proposes to add it. What is the AIS in law, and does an entry in it prove anything?
  Section 285BB requires the prescribed income-tax authority to UPLOAD, in the assessee's registered account, an annual information statement containing information which is in the possession of an income-tax authority, in the prescribed form and manner. That is the whole of the section: it is a disclosure obligation on the department, not a charging provision, not a deeming provision and not an evidentiary one. Rule 114-I lists the six heads of information that go into it and prescribes Form No. 26AS.

Listed strongest first: Supreme Court, then High Court, then Tribunal, then CBDT. Nothing here has yet been read in full by a chartered accountant — open an entry to see where it came from.