New TDS and TCS Forms 138, 140 and 143 Are Due 31

The quarterly TDS return you file on 31 July 2026 will not be Form 24Q. Under the Income-tax Act, 2025, salary TDS moves to Form 138, non-salary TDS to Form 140, and TCS to Form 143 — and the Q1 filing for Tax Year 2026-27 is the first one on the new numbering (CA Guruji Tax, 2026).

Most of what you actually report is the same. What changes is the form your software generates, the section numbers you quote on every challan and certificate, and the very real chance that a deductor filing from memory picks a form that no longer exists.

Key Takeaways

Form 138 replaces Form 24Q (salary TDS), Form 140 replaces Form 26Q (non-salary TDS), and Form 143 replaces Form 27EQ (TCS).
Q1 of Tax Year 2026-27 is due 31 July 2026 — the first quarter filed on the new forms.
The Income-tax Act, 2025 took effect 1 April 2026 and applies wherever credit or payment falls on or after that date.
The Act compresses 819 sections across 23 chapters into 536 sections, so familiar section references have moved even where the rule has not.

Which forms changed, and what do they replace?

Three quarterly statements were renumbered. Form 138 takes over salary TDS from Form 24Q, Form 140 takes over non-salary TDS from Form 26Q, and Form 143 takes over collection at source from Form 27EQ, with all three due by 31 July 2026 for the June quarter (CA Guruji Tax, 2026).

The underlying data set is broadly intact: deductee details, PAN, section, amount paid, tax deducted, challan mapping. If your payroll or accounting system files correctly today, the migration is largely a template update on the vendor's side rather than a new data collection exercise on yours.

Source: CA Guruji Tax on Income-tax Act 2025 form renumbering, 2026.

When does the Income-tax Act, 2025 actually apply to a payment?

The trigger is the earlier of credit or payment. Where that event falls on or after 1 April 2026, the provisions of the Income-tax Act, 2025 apply (PwC Tax Summaries, 2026). The Act replaced the 1961 statute with effect from 1 April 2026 and applies from financial year 2026-27 onward.

That single rule settles most edge cases. An invoice raised in March 2026 but credited to the vendor's account in April falls under the new Act. A payment made in March against a March credit does not. Where your books show both events, the earlier one governs.

Why do the section numbers look unfamiliar?

The 2025 Act condenses 819 sections across 23 chapters into 536 sections (Income Tax Department, 2026). Consolidation on that scale means a rule can survive intact while its address changes — the familiar 194C or 194J reference you have typed for years may now sit under a different number.

This is the part that generates avoidable notices. A deduction made at the correct rate but tagged to a superseded section still reconciles badly at the deductee's end, and the mismatch surfaces in their AIS rather than yours. Before the July filing, get your master of payment-type-to-section mappings re-checked once against the new Act instead of trusting last quarter's file.

What happens if you file late or file on the wrong form?

Late filing of a quarterly statement attracts a fee of ₹200 per day under the late-fee provision, capped at the amount of tax deducted, plus a separate penalty exposure for statements that stay unfiled beyond a year. The fee runs per statement, so a deductor missing all three forms accrues three parallel meters.

Filing on a withdrawn form is a different problem. It does not usually generate a penalty — it generates a rejection, and the rejection does not stop the clock. The deductee, meanwhile, sees nothing in their Form 26AS or AIS and starts asking why their credit is missing right as they prepare their own return.

What should a deductor do before 31 July 2026?

Four checks, in order. Confirm your filing utility or payroll vendor has shipped the Form 138/140/143 schemas. Re-map every recurring payment type to its section under the 2025 Act. Reconcile challans paid since 1 April 2026 against the deductions they are meant to cover. Then validate the return through the department's utility before the last week of July, when the portal carries the heaviest load of the year.

One point of sequencing worth noting: 31 July 2026 is also the ITR deadline for salaried filers, though non-audit business filers now have until 31 August under the new staggered ITR calendar. If you are both a deductor and a business filer, the TDS statement is the one that has to move first.

Our TDS return filing service handles the quarterly statements on the current forms, including section re-mapping and challan reconciliation, and our monthly bookkeeping keeps the deduction ledger tagged through the quarter so the return is assembled rather than rebuilt.

What should you verify before using this TDS guide?

Before acting on new tds and tcs forms 138, 140 and 143 are due 31 july 2026, verify the current rules or platform behavior with the GST Portal. The practical answer depends on your business model, state, turnover, documents, software stack, and whether the decision affects tax, customer data, paid media spend, or a production workflow.

Use this article as a working checklist, then confirm thresholds, registration status, return forms, document rules, and portal notices. In our audits, most expensive mistakes do not come from ignoring the whole process. They come from one stale assumption, one mismatched address, one missing event, or one automation path that nobody tested after launch.

Checkpoint	Why it matters	Where to confirm
Current rule or platform status	Limits, forms, policies, and APIs can change after a blog update.	GST Portal
Your exact business case	A local shop, freelancer, D2C store, agency, and SaaS team rarely need the same next step.	Documents, invoices, campaign data, analytics setup, or workflow logs
Implementation evidence	The safest business decision is backed by proof, not memory or screenshots from an old setup.	Portal acknowledgement, dashboard export, invoice sample, test lead, or error log

How do we apply this in real business work?

We start with the smallest decision that can be verified. For compliance work, that means matching PAN, address, bank, invoices, and portal status before filing. For websites, marketing, analytics, and automation, it means testing the real user path from first click to final record. The boring checks catch the costly failures.

A useful rule: if a claim changes money, tax, reporting, or customer communication, keep evidence for it. Save the acknowledgement, export the report, test the form, and note the date you verified the source. That gives you a clean trail when a client, officer, platform, or internal team asks why the setup was done that way.

When should you get expert review?

Get expert review when the next action can create tax exposure, lost reporting data, ad waste, broken customer communication, or production downtime. A simple self-check is enough for low-risk learning. A filed return, new registration, tracking migration, paid campaign restructure, or live automation deserves a second set of eyes before it affects customers or records.

How often should this be rechecked?

Recheck the decision whenever your turnover, state, product mix, campaign budget, website stack, analytics property, or workflow ownership changes. Also recheck it after major portal updates, platform policy changes, annual filing deadlines, and vendor migrations. The guide is useful today only if the facts behind it still match your business.

What is the fastest safe way to decide?

Write the decision in one sentence, list the proof needed for that sentence, and verify only those items first. This keeps the work focused. If the proof confirms the decision, proceed. If one item is unclear, pause and resolve that point before changing filings, campaigns, tracking, website code, or automation logic.

What can go wrong if you skip verification?

The usual failure is not dramatic at first. It looks like a rejected application, a wrong tax invoice, a missing conversion, a duplicate lead, a broken report, or a workflow that silently stops. Those small failures become expensive when nobody notices them until month-end reporting, filing day, or a customer escalation.

What evidence should you keep after making the change?

Keep enough evidence to reconstruct the decision later. For a compliance topic, that usually means the application reference number, registration certificate, invoice sample, return acknowledgement, payment challan, notice reply, or source link checked on the day of filing. For a website, campaign, analytics setup, or automation, keep the before-and-after screenshot, test submission, dashboard export, webhook log, and the exact setting that changed.

This matters because most business fixes are revisited months later, when nobody remembers the original reason. A short evidence trail makes audits faster, handovers cleaner, and vendor conversations more precise. It also keeps the advice in this guide tied to your real operating context instead of becoming a generic checklist that gets copied without review.

Date checked: record when the official source, dashboard, or portal screen was reviewed.
Business context: note the entity, state, product, campaign, property, or workflow affected.
Proof of action: save the acknowledgement, report export, test result, or live URL.
Owner: assign one person to re-check the item when rules, tools, or business volume change.

Repeat this check whenever rules, platform settings, business volume, or ownership changes.

Which next step should you take after reading this?

Turn the article into one action list. Mark what is already true, what needs proof, and what needs expert review. If you want to go deeper, compare this guide with TDS Return Filing, Bookkeeping Services, and Business ITR Filing. Then update the decision only after the official source and your own records agree.

New TDS and TCS Forms 138, 140 and 143 Are Due 31 July 2026: What Changed Under the Income-tax Act 2025