What Is Form 48?
Form 48 (formerly Form 3CEB) is the chartered accountant's report that certifies a taxpayer's international transactions and specified domestic transactions with associated enterprises. Filing it is mandatory under section 172 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (section 92E of the Income-tax Act, 1961) for every person who has entered into such a transaction during the tax year, and it is due on 31 October — one month before the 30 November income-tax return deadline that applies once section 172 is triggered. The report is obtained from and signed by an accountant, then filed on the e-filing portal separately from the return itself; a return filed without the report already on record does not satisfy section 172.
Who Must File It
Section 172 states that "every person who has entered into an international transaction or specified domestic transaction during a tax year shall obtain a report from an accountant and furnish such report on or before the specified date." For international transactions there is no minimum value — a single cross-border payment to or from an associated enterprise is enough to trigger the requirement. For specified domestic transactions, the obligation only arises once the transactions that qualify as "specified" under section 164 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (section 92BA of the Income-tax Act, 1961) aggregate to more than twenty crore rupees in the tax year; below that threshold, a domestic-only related-party transaction does not need to be reported on Form 48.
What Counts as an International Transaction or a Specified Domestic Transaction
Section 163 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (section 92B of the Income-tax Act, 1961) defines an international transaction as one between two or more associated enterprises, at least one of which is a non-resident. The list is broad: purchase, sale, lease or use of tangible and intangible property; capital financing such as loans, guarantees and advances; provision of services including management, technical, marketing and legal services; business restructuring; and cost-contribution arrangements. A transaction with an unrelated third party can also be deemed international if its terms were, in substance, set by a prior arrangement with the associated enterprise abroad.
Section 164 defines a specified domestic transaction as a closed list of purely domestic related-party dealings — including transactions covered by sections 122, 140(9), 140(13) and 205(4) of the Income-tax Act, 2025, plus any transaction the Board prescribes — whose aggregate value in the tax year exceeds twenty crore rupees. Unlike international transactions, the domestic list is not open-ended: a domestic related-party transaction outside these named categories does not become a specified domestic transaction merely because it is large.
What the Form Covers
A single form covers both categories of transaction. Its title on the Income Tax Department's 2026 forms list is "Report from an accountant to be furnished under section 172 relating to international transaction(s) and/or specified domestic transaction(s)," and the accountant reports the assessee's particulars, the transactions entered into, and the method used to determine the arm's length price under section 165 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (section 92C of the Income-tax Act, 1961). A taxpayer with only one type of transaction still files the same form, reporting only what applies to it.
Form 3CEB, the pre-2026 version of this report, was laid out in three parts: Part A for the assessee's general particulars and the aggregate value of the transactions, Part B for the international transactions, and Part C for the specified domestic transactions. The department publishes Form 48 under a title covering the same two categories of transaction, but the Form 48 utility itself could not be opened to confirm that the three-part layout carries over unchanged, so treat that three-part description as the older form's structure and check the current utility before filing.
What Changed on 1 April 2026
Until 31 March 2026 this report was Form 3CEB, furnished under section 92E of the Income-tax Act, 1961. The Income-tax Act, 2025 and the Income-tax Rules, 2026 took effect on 1 April 2026 and renumbered it. Rule 85(1) of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 provides that the report from an accountant, as defined in section 515(3)(b), required to be furnished under section 172 "shall be in Form No. 48 and be verified in the manner indicated therein." The Income Tax Department's 2026 forms list, checked in September 2026, carries the entry "Form No. 48 — Report from an accountant to be furnished under section 172 relating to international transaction(s) and/or specified domestic transaction(s)."
Both numbers are still live law. Section 536 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 keeps the 1961 Act in force for tax years beginning before 1 April 2026, so a report for the tax year 2025-26 or earlier is a Form 3CEB filing under section 92E, while a report for the tax year 2026-27 onwards is a Form 48 filing under section 172. One caution when searching the portal: the 1961 Act had a different Form 48, used to intimate the non-availability of information under section 138(1)(b), and the department's legacy form wizard still returns that older form. Work from the 2026 forms list.
Filing Deadline — 31 October
Section 173(d) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (section 92F of the Income-tax Act, 1961) defines the "specified date" for furnishing the accountant's report as the date one month before the due date for filing the return of income under section 263(1). Section 263(1)(c) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (Table, Sl. No. 1; section 139(1) of the Income-tax Act, 1961) sets that return due date at 30 November for an assessee to whom section 172 applies — later than the 31 October due date that otherwise applies to companies and other audited entities under the Table's Sl. No. 2. Working back one month from 30 November gives the Form 48 specified date of 31 October. Rule 85(2) of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 states the same requirement from the rules side: the report "shall be furnished at least one month prior to the due date of furnishing return of income as per section 263(1)(c)" — so 31 October is the last permitted date, not a fixed one.
Because the report has to be on record before the return is filed, taxpayers with international or specified domestic transactions effectively work to two deadlines in the same season: the accountant's report by 31 October, and the return itself a month later.
Consequence of Missing the Deadline — a Fee, Not a Penalty
Under the Income-tax Act, 1961, failing to furnish the section 92E report attracted a flat penalty of ₹1,00,000 under section 271BA. That penalty provision does not survive into the Income-tax Act, 2025 in the same form. Section 447, which would have been its direct successor, was omitted by the Finance Act, 2026. In its place, section 428(d) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 provides that a person who "fails to furnish a report from an accountant as required by section 172... shall be liable to pay by way of fee — (i) a sum of ₹50,000 for a delay up to one month for which such failure continues; and (ii) a sum of ₹1,00,000 thereafter."
The shift from a "penalty" to a "fee" is a structural change carried across several defaults under Chapter XXI of the 2025 Act (the tax audit default under section 63 is now a fee under section 428(c), for example), not a change specific to Form 48. But the amount itself is also different from the old law: instead of a flat ₹1,00,000 regardless of how late the filing is, the current fee is tiered — ₹50,000 for a delay of up to a month, rising to ₹1,00,000 only after that.
Why It Matters for Foreign Companies and Investors
Almost any Indian subsidiary, branch, project office, or joint venture that transacts with its foreign parent or group companies — paying management or royalty fees, buying or selling goods, receiving intercompany loans, or licensing intellectual property — is conducting international transactions and needs a Form 48 every year, regardless of the amounts involved. The report is one of the first things a transfer pricing officer or assessing officer checks: it is cross-referenced against the return, against the transfer pricing documentation maintained under section 171 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (section 92D of the Income-tax Act, 1961), and against the transaction values actually reported. A missing report, or one that is inconsistent with the documentation or the return, is a common trigger for scrutiny — independent of whether the pricing itself was at arm's length.
Worked Example
An Indian subsidiary of a US software company pays its US parent an annual management fee and buys licensed software from a group affiliate in Indonesia. Both are international transactions under section 163, and both must be reported regardless of size. Because the subsidiary is audited and section 172 applies to it, its return due date under section 263(1) moves from the standard 31 October to 30 November — so the Form 48 specified date becomes 31 October, not the earlier date that would otherwise apply to an audited company. If the same subsidiary also buys ₹22 crore of components each year from a domestic group company covered by section 140(9), that purchase clears the twenty-crore-rupee threshold under section 164 and must additionally be reported as a specified domestic transaction, on the same form and by the same 31 October deadline.
A short filing checklist for a foreign-owned Indian entity:
- List every transaction during the tax year with an associated enterprise, foreign or domestic
- Confirm whether domestic-only related-party dealings cross the ₹20 crore aggregate threshold under section 164
- Engage an accountant early — preparing the report and the underlying arm's length analysis takes time
- File Form 48 by 31 October
- File the income-tax return by 30 November, only after the report is on record
- Keep the section 171 documentation (Master File and Local File) consistent with what Form 48 reports
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Form 48 required even if the Indian company made a loss for the year?
Yes. Section 172 is triggered by entering into an international transaction or a qualifying specified domestic transaction during the tax year, not by whether the taxpayer earned a profit. A loss-making subsidiary that pays a management fee to its foreign parent, for example, still has to file the report.
Does Form 48 replace transfer pricing documentation?
No. Form 48 is the accountant's summary report on the transactions and the method used to price them. Transfer pricing documentation under section 171 — the Master File, Local File and supporting analysis — is a separate, more detailed requirement that the taxpayer must maintain and be ready to produce, whether or not it is attached to the report.
What happens if Form 48 is filed late?
Under section 428(d) of the Income-tax Act, 2025, a late filer is liable to a fee of ₹50,000 for a delay of up to one month, and ₹1,00,000 if the delay runs longer. This replaced the flat ₹1,00,000 penalty that applied under section 271BA of the Income-tax Act, 1961, after section 447 — its intended successor — was omitted by the Finance Act, 2026.
Is there a minimum transaction value below which Form 48 is not needed?
Not for international transactions — any value with a non-resident associated enterprise triggers section 172. For specified domestic transactions, the requirement applies only once the aggregate of the transactions listed in section 164 exceeds twenty crore rupees for the tax year.
Who is qualified to sign Form 48?
Only an "accountant" as defined in section 515(3)(b) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 — a chartered accountant holding a valid certificate of practice — and not just any member of the Institute. The definition excludes the company's own employees, close relatives of its officers, and anyone who would be disqualified from acting as the company's statutory auditor, so the report has to come from an independent practitioner.
See also: Transfer Pricing, Transfer Pricing Documentation, and Arm's Length Pricing.
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