How to File a TDS Return Online: Form 24Q, 26Q and 27Q Explained

A TDS return — formally a TDS statement — is the quarterly report that ties together three things: the tax you deducted, the challan with which you deposited it, and the PAN of the person it was deducted from. If any one of the three does not match, the deductee does not get credit in their Form 26AS or annual information statement, and you get a demand notice.

The law changed on 1 April 2026

The Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced the Income-tax Act, 1961 from 1 April 2026, and the Income-tax Rules, 2026 replaced the 1962 Rules. Two practical consequences for TDS:

• The sections were renumbered and consolidated. The familiar 192, 194C, 194J, 194H and the rest have been brought into section 392 (salary) and section 393 (other payments) of the new Act, organised as table items. The Income Tax Department's own FAQ says that a deductor must quote the relevant table item of section 393 for transactions on or after 1 April 2026, and that quoting an old section such as 194C or 194J may throw a validation error.
• The return forms were renumbered. The quarterly statements now have new numbers.

The dividing line is the date of payment or credit, whichever is earlier. A sum paid or credited on or before 31 March 2026 stays under the 1961 Act and its forms, even if the return or a correction is filed later. A sum paid or credited on or after 1 April 2026 falls under the 2025 Act.

For a while you will deal with both: new forms for current quarters, old forms for corrections to pre-April 2026 quarters.

Which form do you file?

The form depends on who you paid and what you paid them for, not on who you are.

• Form 24Q / Form 138 — salary paid to employees. Filed by every employer who deducts tax on salary, quarterly, with the annual salary detail in the last quarter.
• Form 26Q / Form 140 — every other payment to a resident: contractors, professional and technical fees, rent, commission, interest other than on securities, and so on. This is the return most small businesses file.
• Form 27Q / Form 144 — any payment to a non-resident on which tax is deductible, including foreign vendors and NRI landlords.

A company that pays salaries, an Indian contractor and a foreign vendor in the same quarter files three statements. (The per-transaction challan-cum-statements — 26QB, 26QC, 26QD, 26QE — are now merged into Form 141; they are not quarterly returns and are not covered here.)

Whether a payment needs TDS in the first place, and at which rate, is a separate question. The contractor-or-professional split is the most common place it goes wrong; our post on 194C vs 194J covers that.

Before you can file: the prerequisites

1. A TAN. Every deductor needs a Tax Deduction and Collection Account Number, quoted on every challan and every return. Quoting a PAN instead of a TAN is a common error, and it means the deposit never reaches the return.
2. Registration on the e-filing portal and on TRACES as a deductor, using the TAN. TRACES is where you download certificates, consolidated files and default reports.
3. The deductees' PANs. Where a PAN is not furnished, a higher rate applies. A PAN that is wrong is often worse than no PAN, because the credit goes to someone else.
4. Tax deposited, with the challan details on hand. For the most part, TDS must be deposited by the 7th of the month following the month of deduction. Tax deducted in March has until 30 April for non-government deductors. The department's FAQ confirms the 2026 Rules keep these timelines unchanged. Payment is made through the e-Pay Tax service on the e-filing portal; keep the BSR code, challan serial number, date and amount, because every one of them goes into the return.
5. A digital signature (DSC) or EVC for the person responsible for deduction, to sign the upload.

The due dates

The quarterly due dates have not moved:

The Q4 salary return carries the annual salary details of every employee, which is why it falls later. Form 130 (formerly Form 16) is generated after the Q4 return has been processed and is due to employees by 15 June. Form 131 (formerly 16A) is issued quarterly, about fifteen days after the return due date. Both must be downloaded from TRACES; a certificate typed out in a spreadsheet is not valid.

How to file a TDS return online: step by step

Step 1 — Reconcile before you prepare anything

Match the quarter's challans to your deduction ledger, deductee by deductee. Every rupee deducted should trace to a challan. Most defaults raised by the processing centre come from skipping this step.

Step 2 — Prepare the statement in the RPU

Download the latest Return Preparation Utility (RPU) from the Protean (formerly NSDL e-Gov) TIN website. It has been updated for the new forms and still supports the old ones for corrections. Commercial TDS software produces the same output file.

In the RPU you fill in:

• Deductor details — TAN, PAN, name, address, type of deductor, and the person responsible for deduction;
• Challan details — every challan for the quarter, with BSR code, date, serial number and amounts split into tax, interest, fee and others;
• Deductee details — for each deduction, the PAN, name, amount paid or credited, date, section (or table item of section 393 for new-Act periods), rate, and tax deducted, each mapped to the challan it was paid under;
• Salary details, in the Q4 salary return, for each employee.

Where a lower rate was applied because the deductee holds a lower or nil deduction certificate, quote the certificate number. A lower rate without one will show as a short deduction. Our lower TDS certificate service covers the deductee's side of that.

Step 3 — Validate with the FVU

Run the file through Protean's File Validation Utility (FVU). It checks structure, PAN formats, challan arithmetic and section codes, and produces either an upload file or an error report. An FVU-clean file can still be wrong on substance; a file that fails cannot be filed at all. Verify challan status on TRACES before uploading.

Step 4 — Upload

There are two routes.

1. On the income tax e-filing portal — log in with the TAN, go to the TDS upload option, choose the form, quarter and financial or tax year, attach the zipped FVU output, and sign with a DSC or EVC.
2. Through a TIN Facilitation Centre run by Protean, with the FVU file on a storage device and a signed verification form.

You get a token number on acceptance. Keep it. You need it to file any correction later, and TRACES asks for it to download certificates.

Step 5 — Check processing, then issue certificates

The statement is processed by the Centralised Processing Cell (TDS). Within a few weeks check TRACES for the processing status and any default raised — short payment, short deduction, late deduction interest, late filing fee, or a PAN error. Then download and issue Form 131 or Form 130 (or 16A / 16 for pre-April 2026 periods) to the deductees.

What it costs to get it wrong

There are four separate charges, and they stack.

Late filing fee — ₹200 a day

Section 234E under the 1961 Act, now section 427 under the 2025 Act: ₹200 for every day the statement is late, capped at the amount of tax deductible in that statement. The fee must be paid before the statement is filed, and the processing centre raises it automatically if you do not.

So a statement with ₹3,000 of TDS cannot draw more than ₹3,000 in fee, however late.

Penalty for late or incorrect return

Under section 461 of the 2025 Act (section 271H under the 1961 Act), the Assessing Officer may impose a penalty of ₹10,000 to ₹1,00,000 for failing to file the statement on time or for filing incorrect information in it.

There is relief for late filing, but it is narrow. No penalty applies if the tax, fee and interest have all been paid and the statement is filed within one month of the due date. That window used to be one year; it is now one month. A return filed six weeks late is exposed to the penalty, even with the fee paid.

The penalty for incorrect information has no such relief.

Interest on late deduction or late deposit

Interest runs at 1% a month where tax was deductible but not deducted, and 1.5% a month where it was deducted but deposited late, with part of a month counted as a whole month. It is calculated by the processing centre and appears as a default on TRACES. Pay it before or with the correction.

Disallowance of the expense

An expense on which TDS was not deducted or not deposited in time can be partly disallowed in your own income-tax computation. Under the 1961 Act this was 30% of the expense under section 40(a)(ia), allowed back in the year the tax is eventually paid. This is the cost people most often forget, because it shows up in the business's own return months later — see our post on what happens if you miss the ITR due date for the return side, and our post on Section 44AB tax audit, since TDS defaults are reported in the tax audit report.

Corrections: the window is now two years

A filed return can be corrected through a correction statement. You download the consolidated file for that statement from TRACES (using the token number of the original), correct it in the RPU, validate it through the FVU, and upload it on the same routes.

What has changed is how long you have. Under the 1961 Act a correction could be filed within six years. From 1 April 2026 the limit is two years from the end of the tax year in which the original statement was due. CBDT allowed a final window, up to 31 March 2026, for older quarters falling outside the new limit. Those quarters are now closed.

A PAN error a deductee raises three years later may now be uncorrectable. Fix errors the quarter you find them.

What if it goes wrong

You missed the due date

File as soon as you can. Every day adds ₹200, and once you pass one month after the due date the penalty under section 461 also becomes possible. Pay the fee and any interest before uploading, so that both conditions for penalty relief are met.

TRACES shows a default after processing

Download the justification report from TRACES. It tells you exactly which line triggered the default. Then:

• for short payment, deposit the shortfall with interest and file a correction tagging the new challan;
• for short deduction caused by a missing lower-deduction certificate or a wrong section, correct the section or certificate details if they were simply mis-entered, or pay the difference with interest if they were not;
• for PAN errors (usually why a deductee's credit is missing), correct the PAN by correction statement;
• for late filing fee demands, pay the fee and tag the challan through a correction.

You have received a notice

Do not ignore an intimation from the processing centre or a show-cause notice for penalty. Penalty relief depends on facts you have to prove: when the tax was paid, when the fee was paid, when the return was filed. Assemble those dates before replying.

If you would like the quarterly cycle handled end to end — reconciliation, preparation, upload, TRACES defaults and certificates — our TDS return filing service does exactly that, and covers the transition between the old forms and the new.