Rule 11UA's 'Registered Valuer' Is a 1957 Credential, Not a 2017 One
The words are identical, and the two credentials are not. Rule 11UA of the Income-tax Rules names a 'registered valuer' as the professional who can certify a virtual digital asset's fair market value above a threshold. Checked directly against Rule 11U's own definitions clause, that term points to Section 34AB of the Wealth-tax Act, 1957, not to Section 247 of the Companies Act or the SFA credential this practice holds. It is a title collision, not a jurisdiction.
Where the Word Shows Up
Finance Act 2022 inserted Section 2(47A) into the Income-tax Act, defining "virtual digital asset" broadly enough to include non-fungible tokens, and Section 115BBH, taxing its transfer at a flat 30 per cent. A dedicated valuation mechanism went with it, inserted into Rule 11UA: invoice value governs where the VDA was bought from a registered dealer, the assessee's own estimate of open market price governs otherwise, and above a threshold of ₹50,000 the assessee may in addition obtain a report from "a registered valuer." That phrase is where the two credentials collide.
Rule 11U(b) Answers Which 'Registered Valuer' It Means
Rule 11U(b) of the Income-tax Rules, the definitions clause governing Rule 11UA generally, states directly: "'registered valuer' shall have the same meaning as assigned to it in section 34AB of the Wealth-tax Act, 1957 (27 of 1957) read with rule 8A of Wealth-tax Rules, 1957." Not the Companies Act credential. A separate, older one, created under a wealth-tax statute that has been out of substantive force since 2015, still cross-referenced here for the narrow purpose of defining who can sign this particular certificate.
This practice's own history with the 2017 credential is covered in Why India Carved Out a Separate Profession Just for Valuation: before Section 247, valuation ran through a patchwork of sector-specific credentials, each statute naming its own qualified professional. The Wealth-tax Act's Section 34AB valuer is exactly that kind of pre-2017 credential, never replaced, just left standing wherever a later rule still cross-refers to it, the way FEMA's Rule 21 does by omission instead, already covered in Cross-Border Share Pricing: Why FEMA Doesn't Recognise a Registered Valuer. Rule 11U(b) does it by exact phrase.
The Companies Act Framework Has Nothing to Say About VDAs Either
The silence is not one-sided. Checked directly against ICAI's Valuation Standards, the same document already checked for "interest rate swap" in The SFA Asset Class Covers What an Entity Holds, Not Just What It Issues, the terms "virtual digital asset," "cryptocurrency," "crypto asset," "digital asset," and "NFT" appear nowhere across all eight standards, and neither the Companies Act, the Valuation Rules, nor Annexure IV names a VDA either. No comprehensive VDA statute exists to fill that gap; regulation runs through the Income-tax Act and Rules alone, and RBI and SEBI have yet to settle even the wider question of who should oversee VDAs at all.
What This Means in Practice
A Section 247 SFA registered valuer signing a Rule 11UA report for a virtual digital asset above ₹50,000 is not doing so on the strength of the SFA license. The rule that authorises the signature points to a different, 1957-vintage credential, one this practice does not hold and one the 2017 regime never replaced. Whether the two happen to sit with the same individual in practice is separate from whether the Companies Act credential is the one doing the legal work, and on the text, it is not. One further question stays open on the record: no IBBI regulation, circular, or reported NCLT or NCLAT order addressing how a corporate debtor's own VDA holdings would be valued in an insolvency proceeding was found in this research. That is not a settled silence like the interest rate swap gap. It is simply a question nobody has had to answer yet.