s.92E — Report from an accountant in Form No. 3CEB
The report every person who has entered into an international transaction or a specified domestic transaction must obtain and furnish in the prescribed form.
Income-tax Act, 1961
s.92E
Income-tax Act, 2025
s.172
In force from 1 April 2026, but s.536(2)(c) preserves the 1961 Act for tax years beginning before that date.
In short
Section 92E of the Income-tax Act, 1961 requires every person who has entered into an international transaction or a specified domestic transaction during a previous year to obtain a report from an accountant and furnish it on or before the specified date in the prescribed form, duly signed and verified in the prescribed manner and setting forth the prescribed particulars. The form is Form No. 3CEB. The obligation is on the person who has entered into the transaction, and it is not conditional on the Assessing Officer first forming any view: an assessee who takes the position that its counterparty is not an associated enterprise and therefore files no report carries the risk of that position being wrong. Failure to furnish the report attracts penalty under section 271BA. The absence of a report also has consequences beyond penalty. In Sun Pharma Advance Research ITAT Ahmedabad treated the assessee's failure to file Form No. 3CEB as the reason for remanding an unsustainable arm's length price for fresh determination rather than deleting the addition. The counterpart in the Income-tax Act, 2025 is section 172.
What the provision does
Puts an independent reporting obligation on the assessee, running in parallel with the documentation requirement in section 92D, so that the Department receives the transaction particulars whether or not it later makes a reference. It does NOT decide whether the parties are associated enterprises, and filing a report is not an admission that they are, provided the position is stated.
Threshold questions
- Whether an international transaction or specified domestic transaction was entered into during the previous year
- Whether the report was obtained from an accountant and furnished by the specified date
- Whether the particulars prescribed in Form No. 3CEB were set forth
- Whether penalty under section 271BA is attracted, and whether reasonable cause is available
In practice
The recurring disputes.
Filing under protest where the relationship is denied
An assessee who believes the counterparty is not an associated enterprise faces a choice: file nothing and preserve the position cleanly, or file a protective report and preserve both. The Revenue treats non-filing as a failure to discharge a statutory obligation that weighs against the assessee later, as Sun Pharma Advance Research shows. Assessees argue that filing a report in respect of a party it says is not an associated enterprise concedes the very point in issue. The practical answer is a report filed with the relationship expressly denied in the covering note, which most benches have not treated as an admission.
Whether non-filing can affect the outcome on merits
The Revenue has used the absence of a report to justify a remand where the transfer pricing order was itself defective, on the footing that neither side complied and the income still has to be computed. Assessees argue that the burden of determining the arm's length price in the assessment lies on the Transfer Pricing Officer, that penalty under section 271BA is the statutory consequence of non-filing, and that importing a further consequence into the quantum appeal is not open. The question is live.
Reasonable cause where the relationship was genuinely arguable
For penalty under section 271BA, assessees rely on section 273B and argue that a bona fide and arguable view that the counterparty was not an associated enterprise is reasonable cause, particularly where the law on section 92A is itself unsettled. The Revenue answers that the thresholds in section 92A(2) are objective and ascertainable from the shareholding, so that a mistake about them is not reasonable. The strength of the plea tracks how arguable the underlying position really was.