Two sets of numbers are now in use for the same work, and which set applies depends on the tax year rather than on the date you are sitting at your desk.
For financial year 2025-26 and earlier, a salary statement is 24Q, a non-salary statement is 26Q, a salary certificate is Form 16 and the deducting provision is section 192. For tax year 2026-27 under the Income-tax Act, 2025, those are Form 138, Form 140, Form 130 and section 392.
Nothing about the obligations changed much. All the numbers did. Here is the mapping in one place.
The statements
These are the quarterly returns, and the ones a practice types most often.
| Old | New, from TY 2026-27 | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 24Q | Form 138 | Deduction from salary |
| 26Q | Form 140 | Deduction other than salary, residents |
| 27Q | Form 144 | Deduction, payments to non-residents |
| 27EQ | Form 143 | Collection at source |
| 24G | Form 137 | Government deductor book entry statement |
The challan-cum-statement family collapses into one number. Forms 26QB, 26QC, 26QD and 26QE all become Form 141, and the exchange statement for virtual digital assets, old 26QF, becomes Form 142.
That consolidation is the one change that is more than a renumbering, and it is the one worth telling staff about, because four separate forms with four separate habits become one.
The certificates and the declarations
The documents a client actually receives, and the ones they bring you in a folder.
| Old | New, from TY 2026-27 | What it is |
|---|---|---|
| 16 | Form 130 | Salary certificate |
| 16A | Form 131 | Certificate for other deductions |
| 16B to 16E | Form 132 | Certificates against the challan-cum-statements |
| 27D | Form 133 | Collection certificate |
| 15G and 15H | Form 121 | Declaration for no deduction |
| 13 | Form 128 | Lower or nil deduction certificate |
| 26B | Form 139 | Refund of tax deducted |
| 15CA and 15CB | Forms 145 and 146 | Remittance information and accountant's certificate |
And the employee-facing set, which is the one most likely to be sitting half-completed in an inbox: old 12B becomes Form 122 (salary from another employer), 12BA becomes Form 123 (perquisites), and 12BB becomes Form 124 (the employee's own claims).
The annual information statement becomes Form 168.
Pro tip
Rename the templates in your own working folders the week the year turns, not the week a client asks. A folder with both "Form 16" and "Form 130" in it, meaning the same document for different years, is how the wrong one gets sent.
The sections
The section numbers change too, and these are the ones that appear in your correspondence and in a notice.
| Old | New | What it governs |
|---|---|---|
| 192 | 392 | Deduction from salary |
| The 194 series | 393, as a Table | Deduction other than salary |
| 206C | 394 | Collection at source |
| 197 and 206C(9) | 395 | Lower and nil certificates |
| 201 and 206C(6A), (7) | 398 | Assessee in default, and interest |
The structural change sits in the second row. The scattered 194-series provisions, each with its own section number, become a table inside section 393(1), with serial numbers instead. So the thing you used to call "a 194C deduction" is a deduction under a numbered serial of the 393(1) Table, and anything that quotes a section to a client needs to quote the right one for the right year.
The interest and penalty provisions move as well: Chapter XIX-B of the 2025 Act carries sections 392 to 402, with 398 for interest and 427 for the fee.
Both sets are live at the same time
This is the part that matters operationally, and it is why a simple find-and-replace across your templates is the wrong move.
A correction statement for a quarter of financial year 2024-25 filed next month is still a 26Q correction. A regular statement for a quarter of tax year 2026-27 is a Form 140. Your practice will be producing both for several years, and the file formats are published separately: the preparation and validation utilities carry 24Q, 26Q, 27Q and 27EQ formats to FY 2025-26, and the 138, 140, 143 and 144 formats from TY 2026-27.
The rule to hold on to is the same one that governs the updated return: the year decides the form, not the filing date. The same rule applies to ITR-U and ITR-UN.
For a practice that works from checklists, the simplest protection is to put the tax year at the top of every checklist and the form number beside it, rather than leaving the form number to memory.
Important
Do not bulk-rename old templates. A statement for an earlier year keeps its old form number for as long as you are still filing or correcting that year.
What this means for the software you use
A practical test for any tool that claims to handle this: ask it what it does with a financial year it has not been taught.
The correct behaviour is to refuse, by name. A year is its own set of forms, its own field layouts and its own rates, and a tool that reaches for last year's layout when it meets an unfamiliar year will produce a file that looks right and validates against the wrong specification.
The second test is where the form layouts come from. A field list typed in by hand from a circular is a field list that drifts. A field list taken from the published file format sheet, with the sheet named and the date it was read recorded beside it, can be checked by anybody.
Greenote holds each form's fields that way, with the published sheet, the source and the date read recorded against every one, and treats a new year as a new set of files rather than an edit to the old set.
Conclusion
None of this changes what a practice owes. It changes every number used to describe it, in the middle of a period when both sets are in use.
The safe habit is to attach the tax year to the form number every time either is written down, in checklists, in folder names and in letters to clients. The unsafe habit is to assume the number you have used for a decade still means what it meant.
Finding deductions nobody made runs under both Acts, and is a good place to see the two-year split in practice. See what the TDS workspace covers.
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