Income tax e-Filing portal whereby a new option has been enabled in the portal’s registration tab for Non-Residents not holding and not required to have PAN to register and file Form 10F.

Brief overview

• Rule 21AB mandates filing of Form 10F by non-resident taxpayers availing the benefit of Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (‘DTAA’) under section 90 of Income Tax Act, 1961 (‘ITL’). DGIT(Systems) Notification No. 3 of 2022 had mandated e-filing of Form 10F;
• Non-residents who are not required to have PAN as per provisions of ITL faced the difficulty of filing the Form 10F online as the same required PAN for registration in the e-Filing portal;
• To mitigate genuine hardship faced by such taxpayers, several notifications were issued extending relaxation for mandatory filing of Form 10F. This requirement was further extended to September 30, 2023;
• The new option in the registration tab has come soon after it became mandatory to file Form 10F online from October 1, 2023;
• This would allow non-residents to fulfil their compliance obligation of filing Form 10F online without the PAN prerequisite;
• However, it is pertinent to note that no official notification has been issued by tax authorities for the same and there are some areas where clarity is awaited such as the requirement to sign the form 10F electronically through a digital signature of authorised signatory who in turn needs to apply for PAN for themselves and subsequently registration of their DSC for signing on form 10F.