Form 3CEB: Transfer Pricing Report Guide (India)

Your Indian company raised money from a US parent, or bills a Singapore holding company for engineering work, and your CA mentions you now need to file Form 3CEB. Most founders have never heard of it until that moment.

Form 3CEB is the transfer pricing accountant’s report: a short, CA-certified filing that tells the tax department about every transaction you had with your foreign group company, and confirms you priced them at arm’s length. The catch that surprises people: there is no minimum value. One intercompany invoice, or one interest-free loan from the parent, and the filing is due. This guide covers what Form 3CEB is, the 31 October deadline, who signs it, what it actually discloses, the penalty for missing it, and how it sits on top of your transfer pricing study.

1 What Form 3CEB actually is

Form 3CEB is the accountant’s report required under Section 172 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 (the old Section 92E of the 1961 Act). If you enter into an international transaction with an associated enterprise (AE), a Chartered Accountant must examine your records and file this report certifying that you have kept the required transfer pricing information and documents, and reporting the arm’s length position of each transaction.

Think of it as the tax department’s front door into your cross-border pricing. It is a structured form, not a free-text note: for every transaction with your foreign group entity, it captures the nature of the transaction, the amount, the method used to test the price, and the arm’s length price arrived at.

2 No minimum value: the point founders miss

This is the single most important thing to understand. There is no threshold for Form 3CEB. People confuse it with the ₹1 crore limit, but that limit belongs to the transfer pricing study (the Local File under Rule 10D, Sec 171), not to the 3CEB.

So a seed-stage startup that received one ₹40 lakh service payment from its US parent has no obligation to maintain the full Rule 10D study, but it still must file Form 3CEB. The report simply reflects the smaller position. Skipping it because “we are too small” is the classic first-year mistake.

3 Who signs it, and what it discloses

Form 3CEB must be signed and filed by a Chartered Accountant. Importantly, it does not have to be your statutory auditor. You can appoint a separate CA, often a transfer pricing specialist, to issue the 3CEB, because it is an independent professional report, not a management declaration.

The CA does not just rubber-stamp your numbers. The report is in two parts and, transaction by transaction, it discloses:

• The name of the AE and its relationship to you (parent, subsidiary, common control).
• The nature and amount of each international transaction: services, goods, royalties, interest, loans, guarantees, cost allocations.
• The method chosen to test the price (CUP, RPM, CPM, TNMM or PSM).
• The arm’s length price (ALP) determined, and whether your actual price matched it.

For most Indian startups, which run as a captive development centre on cost-plus, the method is TNMM and the disclosed margin is your operating profit over operating cost. The CA has to see that this is supported before signing.

4 The 31 October deadline and how it fits the ITR

Form 3CEB is due by 31 October of the assessment year. Companies with transfer pricing obligations get an extended income tax return due date of 30 November, so the sequence is deliberate: the accountant’s report is filed one month before the return, and you tick the box in your ITR confirming the 3CEB has been furnished.

5 Worked example: Brewly’s first 3CEB

Numbers make this concrete. Here is how a typical captive set-up looks when it lands on the form.

Because the ₹4.6 crore of service income is an international transaction with an AE, Brewly must file Form 3CEB, no matter that it is a young company. It is also over the ₹1 crore mark, so it maintains the full Rule 10D study as well. On the 3CEB, the CA discloses the service transaction, notes the method as TNMM, and reports the ALP margin (say a benchmarked range of 14% to 18%) against Brewly’s actual 15%. Because 15% sits inside the range, no adjustment is needed and the report is clean.

6 Form 3CEB versus the transfer pricing study

Founders routinely conflate these two, so keep them separate in your head.

The study is the evidence: the FAR analysis, the comparables, the margin working that proves your price is at arm’s length. The 3CEB is the certified summary the CA files, drawing on that study. You can be under ₹1 crore and skip the full study but still owe the 3CEB; you cannot file a defensible 3CEB on a large captive without the study behind it.

7 The penalty for getting it wrong

Failure to furnish Form 3CEB attracts a penalty of ₹1,00,000 (the provision carrying forward the old Section 271BA). That is a flat penalty for not filing, separate from any adjustment to your income.

The bigger exposure is a wrong or incomplete report. If the assessing officer makes a transfer pricing adjustment because a transaction was mispriced or omitted, that adjustment increases taxable income and can carry its own penalties for under-reporting. So the 3CEB is one place where filing something is not enough: it has to be accurate.

8 Your Form 3CEB checklist

1. List every transaction with a foreign group company this year, including loans, guarantees and cost cross-charges, not just service income.
2. Confirm you have an intercompany agreement backing each stream, before the CA reviews it.
3. Check whether you crossed ₹1 crore in aggregate, which switches on the full Rule 10D study.
4. Have the benchmarking study and margin agreed by August, not October.
5. Appoint a CA for the 3CEB (can be separate from your statutory auditor).
6. File Form 3CEB on the portal by 31 October and accept it from the company login.
7. File the income tax return by 30 November, referencing the 3CEB.
8. Retain the study and workings; produce them if a transfer pricing notice arrives.

9 FAQs

Disclaimer: This article is general information as of August 2026 and is not tax or legal advice. Transfer pricing provisions, forms and due dates under the Income-tax Act, 2025 can change and are fact-specific. Confirm your Form 3CEB obligation and pricing position with a qualified Chartered Accountant before acting.