Form 144, Quarterly TDS Return for Payments to Non-Residents, formerly Form 27Q

Form 144 is the quarterly statement of tax deducted on payments other than salary made to non-residents and foreign companies. 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 27Q from FY 2026-27. If your engagement letters, vendor contracts or accounting software still say 27Q, this is the form those references now point to.

Non-resident deduction has a table of its own under the new Act. Payments to residents are governed by the Section 393(1) table; payments to non-residents sit in a separate table at Section 393(2). Old Section 195, interest and any other sum chargeable under the Act paid to a non-resident and not being income chargeable under the head Salaries, is now Section 393(2), Table Sl. No. 17. That is the last entry in the table and it is the residual sweep-up, which is exactly the role 195 played before it: anything chargeable that no earlier entry has already caught lands there.

One structural detail matters more than it looks. The 393(2) table has no threshold column at all. Its columns are the serial number, the nature of the income or sum, the payee, the payer and the rate, and nothing else, which preserves the old position that Section 195 had no threshold. The question on a payment to a non-resident is whether the sum is chargeable under the Act, not whether it has crossed a limit, and reasoning from a resident threshold is how a deduction gets missed entirely.

This is still the most error-prone of the three quarterly statements, and renumbering does not simplify it. The rate depends on both the nature of the payment and the treaty, if any, between India and the payee's country of residence, and a treaty rate is claimed on the same evidence as before: residence and beneficial ownership documentation collected from the payee before the payment goes out, not after the quarter closes. Salary paid to a non-resident employee does not belong here either. Sl. No. 17 expressly excludes income chargeable under the head Salaries, and salary is deducted under Section 392 and reported with the employer's other salary deductions on Form 138.

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 27Q under the Income-tax Rules, 1962, including a correction filed today. The first Form 144 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 the two commencement dates apart: 1 April 2025 brought the Finance Act 2025 threshold changes under the old Income-tax Act, 1961, while 1 April 2026 brought the Income-tax Act, 2025 and this form change.