Income Tax Department Trains Mumbai Sub-Registrars on SFT and Form 165 Under Income Tax Act, 2025

The Directorate of Income Tax (Intelligence & Criminal Investigation), Mumbai has stepped up coordination with Maharashtra's Stamp Duty and Registration Department on high-quality information reporting under the Income Tax Act, 2025. At a mega outreach programme in Mumbai on 6 September 2026, more than 200 Sub-Registrar officers from Mumbai City and Mumbai Suburban Districts were given detailed guidance on the Statement of Financial Transaction (SFT) and Form 165.

The official Ministry of Finance release places particular emphasis on four operational areas: accurate PAN reporting, correct capture of transaction and stamp values, data validation, and rectification of reporting errors. For Chartered Accountants, tax teams and organisations that routinely reconcile property or registration-related information with tax records, the development signals a sharper focus on the quality of information entering the tax administration's data systems rather than merely on whether a report has been filed.

What the 6 September outreach covered

The programme was organised by the Directorate of Income Tax (I&CI), Mumbai in collaboration with the Stamp Duty and Registration Department at Prakashgad, Bandra (East). The participating audience was made up of officers of Sub-Registrar Offices across Mumbai City and Mumbai Suburban Districts.

According to the official release, the technical and operational sessions covered SFT reporting and Form 165 under the Income Tax Act, 2025. Officers were guided on accurate capture of PAN and transaction-related information, data validation, reporting errors and practical problems encountered during reporting. The programme concluded with an interactive session in which officers' queries were addressed.

Why data quality is becoming a tax-compliance issue

Dr. Santosh C. Mankoskar, Director of Income Tax (I&CI), Mumbai, described tax administration as increasingly technology-enabled, information-driven and risk-based. The release also describes the Registration Department as having moved beyond revenue collection toward citizen-friendly registration, digitalisation and data-driven governance.

That shift matters because registration records can become an important source of economic information used by tax systems. The department specifically linked high-quality SFT information with voluntary compliance, risk analysis, widening of the tax base and transparent governance. In practical terms, inaccurate PANs, inconsistent transaction values or uncorrected reporting errors can reduce the usefulness of data matching and can also create avoidable mismatches for taxpayers.

What CAs and tax teams should check

- PAN accuracy: Where clients undertake reportable property or registration transactions, PAN details should be checked against the underlying records rather than copied from unverified working papers.

- Value consistency: Transaction value and stamp-related value fields should be reconciled with registered documents and the data used in tax-return or information-reporting workflows.

- Error correction: Reporting teams should maintain a process for identifying and rectifying erroneous information instead of treating filing as the end of the compliance cycle.

- Audit trail: Advisers and finance teams should preserve source documents and reconciliations that explain how reported identifiers and values were validated.

The official release does not announce a new tax rate, threshold or penalty. Its significance is operational: the Income Tax Department is actively working with a major source department to improve the accuracy, completeness and timeliness of transaction data. Professionals should therefore treat data integrity as part of tax readiness, especially where third-party information can be compared with taxpayer filings.

The 6 September programme is a fresh indicator of how the Income Tax Act, 2025 is being operationalised through inter-departmental data cooperation. For CAs and tax professionals, the immediate task is not to react to a new levy, but to tighten PAN, value and reconciliation controls so that information reported by registration authorities and information reflected in taxpayer records are less likely to diverge.

Official source: View the official source document

Key takeaway

More than 200 Mumbai Sub-Registrar officers received Income Tax Department guidance on SFT, Form 165, PAN accuracy, transaction values, validation and error rectification under the Income Tax Act, 2025.