Form 140, Quarterly TDS Return for Non-Salary Payments to Residents, formerly Form 26Q

Form 140 is the quarterly statement of tax deducted on payments other than salary made to resident payees. It is prescribed under section 397(3)(b) of the Income-tax Act, 2025 read with rule 219 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026, and it replaced Form 26Q from FY 2026-27. It carries the same working load Form 26Q did, which for most businesses is the bulk of routine TDS: contractors, professionals, landlords, lenders and shareholders, all reported quarterly against a single TAN.

What changed underneath is the reference you quote against each payment. The Income-tax Act, 2025 consolidated the old 194-series into one table-driven provision, so a resident payment is now identified by a serial number inside the Section 393(1) table rather than by a section of its own. Contract work, old 194C, is Section 393(1), Table Sl. No. 6(i). Fees for professional services, fees for technical services, director's remuneration other than salary and royalty, all of which were 194J, sit together at Table Sl. No. 6(iii). Commission or brokerage paid by a specified person, old 194H, is Table Sl. No. 1(ii), with insurance commission separate at Sl. No. 1(i). Rent paid by a specified person, old 194-I, is Table Sl. No. 2(ii). Interest other than interest on securities, old 194A, splits by payer: Sl. No. 5(ii) where the payer is a banking company, a co-operative society carrying on banking business or a post office operating a notified Central Government scheme, and Sl. No. 5(iii) for any other specified person. Interest on securities, old 193, is Sl. No. 5(i), and dividend declared by a domestic company, old 194, is Sl. No. 7.

Several of those rows carry more than one rate, and the rate branch lives inside the row rather than in a serial number of its own, which is the detail a migrated return template most often loses. Sl. No. 6(i) is a single row at 1% where the contractor is an individual or HUF and 2% otherwise, with thresholds of ₹30,000 for a single sum and ₹1,00,000 in aggregate for the year. Sl. No. 2(ii) is a single row at 2% for machinery, plant or equipment and 10% for land, a building, land appurtenant to a building, furniture or fittings, and its threshold is now ₹50,000 for a month or part of a month rather than the old annual figure. Sl. No. 6(iii) runs at 10% in general and 2% for technical services that are not professional services, for royalty in the nature of consideration for the sale, distribution or exhibition of cinematographic films, and where the payee is engaged only in the business of operating a call centre. Cite the row as 6(i), 2(ii) or 6(iii), and add the rate branch only when you are actually quoting a rate.

Getting the reference right is mechanical, not editorial: a statement that quotes an old section number is rejected at TRACES. There is also an overlap worth knowing, because it decides whether a payment belongs on this form at all. An individual or HUF who is not otherwise required to deduct reports contract work, professional fees and commission at Sl. No. 6(ii), not at 6(i), 6(iii) or 1(ii), and 6(ii) is filed on Form 141 rather than here. Form 141 is self-contained, combining deduction, payment and statement into one filing that needs no TAN, so rent at Sl. No. 2(i), a property purchase at 3(i), payments to contractors and professionals at 6(ii) and a virtual digital asset transfer at 8(vi) are reported there and are not repeated on Form 140. Payments to non-residents and foreign companies go on Form 144.

The form follows the year the return covers, not the date you file it. A statement for FY 2025-26 or earlier stays on Form 26Q under the Income-tax Rules, 1962, including a correction filed today. The first Form 140 statement was Q1 of FY 2026-27, due 31 July 2026, and the quarterly deadlines are unchanged at 31 July, 31 October, 31 January and 31 May. Keep 1 April 2025 and 1 April 2026 apart while reading any of this: the first brought Finance Act 2025 threshold changes under the old 1961 Act, the second brought the new Act and this form.

One thing this page deliberately does not give you is the numeric payment code. Returns and challans under Section 393 are filed against numeric payment codes, and a wrong code parks the credit in the wrong place in the payee's statement, which is worse than having no code at hand. Published versions of the code list contradict each other, so take the code from the Department's own return preparation utility or from the CBDT notification rather than from any chart, including ours.