Income Tax Forms Renumbered in 2026: The Complete Old-to-New Reference

Every income tax form you use changed number on 1 April 2026. This is the complete old-to-new table, with what each form is, who files it and when.

Last verified: 5 September 2026 · Applies to: Tax Year 2026-27 onward. FY 2025-26 filings still use the old form numbers.

Contents

• Read this before you use the table
• TDS and TCS certificates
• TDS and TCS returns
• Audit and transfer pricing reports
• Foreign remittance and cross-border forms
• Declarations and applications
• The complete list, in one place
• How to talk to your software vendor about this
• Frequently asked questions
• How BVACA can help

Read this before you use the table

Three things decide whether you use the old number or the new one.

The date of the compliance, not the date you are sitting at. FY 2025-26 is governed by the Income-tax Act, 1961 and its forms. A tax audit report being filed for FY 2025-26 is still Form 3CA/3CB and 3CD, not Form 26. Returns and reports for Tax Year 2026-27 onward use the new numbers.

The new forms are not just renamed. Several carry fields the old versions did not, most visibly the UDIN of the certifying Chartered Accountant and the payee's Tax Residency Certificate in the remittance forms. Treat them as new forms with familiar content, not as the same PDF with a new header.

The section numbers moved too. A form is only half of a citation. The matching section mapping is in the matching section-number mapping, and it is worth having open alongside this page.

TDS and TCS certificates

Issuing due dates: Form 130 (salary TDS certificate) — by 15 June following the end of the financial year. Form 131 (non-salary) — within 15 days of the due date of the quarterly TDS return. Form 133 (TCS certificate) — within 15 days of the due date of the quarterly TCS return.

Form 130 is the one every salaried person in India knows by its old name. Employees will ask for "Form 16" for years. There is no harm in the HR portal labelling it "Form 130 (Form 16)" for a transition period, and considerable harm in an employee not recognising the document their loan application asks for.

One substantive point for employers: the ESOP perquisite is reported in Form 130 under salary, and the employer must deduct TDS in the month of exercise under section 392 (the old section 192). Failure triggers a default under the old section 201 with interest at 1.5% per month.

TDS and TCS returns

Deposit of tax deducted remains by the 7th of the following month, with 30 April for March deductions.

The form most likely to be filed wrongly this year is Form 144. It carries deductions on payments to non-residents, which now belong to section 393(2), Table Sl. No. 17 rather than to "section 195". Two things have to change together in your system: the return form number and the section code inside it. Changing one without the other produces a filed return that reconciles to nothing. Our TDS compliance guide covers the wider deduction discipline.

Audit and transfer pricing reports

Three separate forms collapsed into one Form 26. Under the old regime you chose between 3CA and 3CB depending on whether accounts were audited under another law, and 3CD was the annexure of particulars in either case. Practically, this means your firm's internal checklist that branches at "3CA or 3CB?" needs rewriting as a single path.

The tax audit provision itself moved from section 44AB to section 63, and the specified date is now defined as one month before the return due date rather than as a fixed calendar date. Because return due dates for Tax Year 2026-27 run 31 July, 31 August, 31 October and 30 November 2027 by category, the audit report date moves with the category.

Form 48 (transfer pricing report) is due 31 October 2027 for Tax Year 2026-27 — one month before the s.263(1)(c) return due date of 30 November 2027 for TP cases, in line with the s.63(5)(a) audit-report timing rule.

For the current 1961 Act season, the FY 2025-26 dates are unchanged: tax audit report on Form 3CA/3CB and 3CD by 30 September 2026, Form 3CEB by 31 October 2026, and no CBDT extension has been announced as at 5 September 2026.

Foreign remittance and cross-border forms

Scope of the supporting forms. Form 147 (old 15CC) is filed by authorised dealer branches with quarterly details of foreign remittances they have processed. Form 148 (old 15CD) is filed by IFSC units with details of specified remittances. Form 97 (old Form 60) is the declaration by a person without a PAN entering into specified transactions above prescribed thresholds. Form 98 (old Form 61) is the statement by reporting entities aggregating Form 97 declarations received during a period.

Two operational notes.

Order matters on 145 and 146. The Chartered Accountant files Form 146 first; the acknowledgement number is the input to Part C of Form 145. Form 145 has four parts: Part A for taxable remittances up to ₹5 lakh in aggregate for the year, Part B where an Assessing Officer's certificate exists, Part C supported by Form 146, and Part D for remittances not chargeable to tax. The full workflow is in the Form 145 and Form 146 remittance workflow.

Form 41 must be filed electronically. The manual filing reprieve for non-residents expired on 30 September 2023. A non-resident without a PAN registers under the portal category "Non-residents not holding and not required to have a PAN", which issues a User ID in lieu of PAN, with verification by digital signature or OTP. A Tax Residency Certificate is mandatory for treaty relief under section 159(8). See Form 41, the TRC and treaty relief.

Declarations and applications

Form 128 is the one to memorise. The lower or nil TDS certificate is applied for under section 395(1) of the Income-tax Act, 2025, and section 197 now means tax on long-term capital gains. A form or covering letter that says "application under section 197 in Form 13" is wrong twice over. The consequences, especially on NRI property sales, are set out in Form 128 and the section 395 certificate.

Note also that Rule 213 consolidated six earlier rules, being Rules 28, 28AA, 28AB, 29, 37G and 37H, so a checklist citing any of those has no one-to-one successor to point at.

The complete list, in one place

For copy-paste into your own checklist.

Illustrative example. A Panchkula company with 40 employees, a handful of resident vendors and one overseas software subscription runs a full quarter under the new numbering as follows. Salary TDS goes into Form 138 by 31 October for the July to September quarter, with tax deposited by the 7th of each month. Resident vendor deductions go into Form 140 on the same date. The overseas payment, if chargeable and above the ₹5 lakh aggregate for the year, needs Form 146 from the CA before the company files Form 145 Part C, and the deduction is reported in Form 144. At year end, employees receive Form 130, vendors receive Form 131, and the tax audit report, if applicable, is Form 26, due one month before the company's return date.

How to talk to your software vendor about this

Most accounting, payroll and TDS packages issued a patch during 2026. Patches vary in how deep they go, and the difference matters. Five questions worth putting in writing to your vendor.

1. Have you changed the form numbers only, or the underlying return schema? Renaming "26Q" to "140" on a screen is cosmetic. What matters is whether the file generated for upload matches the current schema.

2. Have the section codes changed inside the TDS masters? The specific ones to ask about: salary from 192 to 392, property purchase from a resident from 194-IA to section 393(1), Table Sl. No. 3(i), and payments to non-residents from 195 to section 393(2), Table Sl. No. 17. Ask them to show you a sample record, not a release note.

3. What happens to the "Assessment Year" field? Under the 2025 Act the period is a tax year, and "AY 2027-28" does not exist. If the software derives an assessment year by adding one to the financial year, ask whether the period logic changed or only the label.

4. Can the system still produce FY 2025-26 filings on the old forms? You need both for at least another year. A patch that removes the old forms is not a patch, it is a problem.

5. What is the migration path for historical data? Prior-year records should stay described as they were filed. Retrospectively renumbering a filed FY 2024-25 return in your own records makes reconciliation with the department's records harder, not easier.

If your finance team does not want to run this in parallel with a live audit season, our outsourced payroll and TDS compliance team runs the quarterly cycle on the current forms and section codes as a managed service.

Frequently asked questions

What is the new number for Form 16?

Form 130. From 1 April 2026, the TDS certificate for salary is Form 130 under the Income-tax Rules, 2026. Form 16A, the non-salary TDS certificate, is Form 131, and Form 27D, the TCS certificate, is Form 133. Certificates for FY 2025-26 continue to use the old numbers.

Is Form 10F now Form 41?

Yes. Form 10F, the information furnished by a non-resident claiming treaty relief, is now Form 41 under Rule 75 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026. It must be filed electronically, and a Tax Residency Certificate is mandatory under section 159(8) of the Income-tax Act, 2025.

What replaced Form 3CD for tax audit?

Form 26. The three old forms, 3CA, 3CB and 3CD, were consolidated into a single Form 26. The tax audit provision moved from section 44AB to section 63, and the report is due one month before the return due date under section 63(5)(a). For FY 2025-26, the old forms still apply, with a 30 September 2026 deadline.

What is the new form number for 27Q?

Form 144, the quarterly TDS return for non-resident payees. Its due dates are 31 July, 31 October, 31 January and 31 May. Remember to change the section code as well: deductions on payments to non-residents are now under section 393(2), Table Sl. No. 17, not section 195.

Have Forms 15G and 15H been replaced?

Yes, by a single Form 121, the self-declaration for nil TDS. Where the old regime used Form 15G for most taxpayers and Form 15H for senior citizens, the Income-tax Rules, 2026 prescribe one form. It is furnished by the recipient of income to the payer.

Do I use old or new form numbers for my FY 2025-26 filing?

Old numbers. FY 2025-26 is governed by the Income-tax Act, 1961, so its returns, certificates and audit reports use the 1961 Act forms. The new numbering applies to Tax Year 2026-27, being the financial year that began 1 April 2026, which will be filed in 2027.

How BVACA can help

Bachhal Vijender & Associates runs payroll and TDS compliance for businesses on the current forms and section codes, which in practice means running two sets of numbering in parallel through this transition year. We help finance teams check what their software patch actually changed, correct vendor masters where section codes are stale, and issue the certificates and returns in the right form for the right period. Where a certificate has already gone out under an old form number for a post-April-2026 period, we deal with the correction rather than leaving it to surface at assessment.

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Author box: CA Vijender Singh Bachhal, Managing Partner, Bachhal Vijender & Associates (FRN 028355N), Panchkula. About the firm

Disclaimer: This article is general information current as at 5 September 2026, not advice for a specific situation. Tax and corporate law in India changed materially on 1 April 2026; verify the position before acting. Illustrative examples are not client matters.