If you've tried to fill out a TDS challan or return since 1 April 2026 and gone looking for "Section 194J" or "Section 194C," you've probably noticed it isn't there anymore. It's not a bug in your software — the Income-tax Act, 2025 genuinely retired the entire 194-series, and most compliance calendars, contracts, and conversations haven't caught up yet. Everyone still says "194J." Almost nothing you file from FY 2026-27 onward actually uses that number.
This is a lookup post: what Section 393(1) is, the new numeric code for each of the payment types you're used to citing by their old section number, the one section that skips the code system entirely, and Form 132 — the new consolidated TDS certificate that quietly replaced four separate forms.
This reflects the Income-tax Act, 2025 (in force for payments from 1 April 2026) and CBDT's Form 141/Form 132 rules as reported and documented as of this writing. Payment codes and form numbers below are cross-checked against the Income Tax Department's own Section 393 and Form 132 references — see Sources at the end. Confirm against your challan/return utility before filing, since form and portal behaviour can lag the law by a few weeks.
What Section 393(1) actually is
Chapter XVII-B of the old Income-tax Act, 1961 scattered non-salary TDS across dozens of standalone sections — 194A for interest, 194C for contractors, 194H for commission, 194I for rent, 194J for professional and technical fees, 194Q for goods purchases, 194-O for e-commerce payments, and so on. The Income-tax Act, 2025 folds nearly all of that into a single section, 393(1), organised as a set of tables rather than a list of standalone provisions. Table 1 covers most of what you'd recognise from the old 194-series — commission, rent, property transactions, interest, contractor payments, professional/technical fees, purchase of goods, and more.
Each row in Table 1 carries a numeric payment code — a four-digit number in the 1001–1067 range — that you quote on the TDS challan and return instead of the old section number. The old names haven't been deleted from anyone's vocabulary, and this post still uses them as the primary label for exactly that reason: "194J" is what you search for and what's written into most existing contracts. But your challan and return want the code, not the name, for any deduction where the income or payment falls due on or after 1 April 2026.
Quick lookup: old section → Section 393(1) payment code
Straight from the mapping our TDS Calculator already uses internally:
| Old section | Covers | Rate | Section 393(1) reference | Payment code |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 194H | Commission or brokerage | 2% | Table 1, Sl. 1(ii) | 1006 |
| 194I (plant & machinery) | Rent of plant & machinery | 2% | Table 1, Sl. 2(ii)(a) | 1008 |
| 194I (land/building) | Rent of land, building, furniture | 10% | Table 1, Sl. 2(ii)(b) | 1009 |
| 194A | Interest (other than securities) | 10% | Table 1, Sl. 5(ii)/5(iii) | 1020 / 1021 / 1022 |
| 194C (individual/HUF) | Contractor payment | 1% | Table 1, Sl. 6(i)(a) | 1023 |
| 194C (company/firm) | Contractor payment | 2% | Table 1, Sl. 6(i)(b) | 1024 |
| 194J (technical/royalty) | Technical services, certain royalty | 2% | Table 1, Sl. 6(iii)(a) | 1026 |
| 194J (professional) | Professional/consultancy fees | 10% | Table 1, Sl. 6(iii)(b) | 1027 |
| 194Q | Purchase of goods (buyer's TDS) | 0.1% | Table 1, Sl. 8(ii) | 1031 |
| 194-O | E-commerce operator payment | 0.1% | Table 1, Sl. 8(v) | 1035 |
A few things worth knowing before you copy a code off this table:
- 194A gets three codes, not one — 1020, 1021, or 1022 — because the old section's threshold already varied by who's paying (a bank versus anyone else) and whether the recipient is a senior citizen. That variation carries over; the code you use depends on which of those three cases applies, not just "which section." Our 194A section page walks through the thresholds.
- 194J splits by rate, not by the section number you're used to. Professional/consultancy fees (code 1027, 10%) and technical services/certain royalty (code 1026, 2%) were always taxed differently under 194J — that split is just more visible now that each has its own code instead of sharing a section number.
- 194Q and 194-O keep their own no-PAN rate (5%, not the usual 206AA flat 20%) and their excess-over-threshold mechanics — none of that changed with the renumbering, only the code you file under.
For the full picture on any one of these — thresholds, worked examples, and PAN/no-PAN rates — the individual section pages (194C individual, 194C company, 194H, 194I plant & machinery, 194I land & building, 194J professional, 194J technical, 194Q, and 194-O) go deeper than this table does.
The one exception: 194IB doesn't get a payment code at all
Rent paid by an individual or HUF not otherwise required to have a TAN — the old Section 194IB, 2% on rent above ₹50,000/month — is the odd one out. It isn't assigned a Table 1 payment code the way everything above is. Instead, it's filed through Form 141, a challan-cum-statement that replaced the old 26QB/26QC/26QD/26QE forms used for property- and rent-type deductions where the deductor typically doesn't have a TAN. You quote your PAN, not a payment code, and the challan-cum-statement itself carries the transaction detail.
If you're a tenant deducting TDS on rent above ₹50,000/month and don't already have a TAN, this is the path that applies to you — see the 194IB section page for the threshold detail and a worked example.
Form 132: the new consolidated TDS certificate
Here's the part that's had far less coverage than the payment-code renumbering: the TDS certificate you issue to a deductee also changed. Forms 16B, 16C, 16D, and 16E — the separate certificates for TDS on property purchases, rent, e-commerce/other Section 194-type deductions, and virtual digital asset transfers respectively — have been merged into a single Form 132, issued under Section 395(4) of the new Act.
Practically:
- Form 132 is generated from the TRACES portal, not created manually, and only after the underlying Form 141 challan-cum-statement has been filed and processed.
- It must be issued within 15 days of the due date for filing that Form 141 statement.
- It dynamically reflects whatever the underlying transaction was — rent, property transfer, commission, technical services, or a VDA payment — rather than you picking a specific certificate template the way you'd previously choose between 16B and 16C.
For a deductee, the practical effect is one certificate type to recognise and reconcile against Form 26AS/AIS instead of four, whichever kind of payment it came from. For a deductor, it means the old habit of "which form do I issue for this deduction" collapses into "did I file Form 141 correctly" — get that right and the certificate generation is largely automatic.
Which name to use where
The short version, since this is the part people actually get tripped up on:
- On the challan and the TDS return (Form 141, or the regular TDS statement for anything not routed through 141): use the numeric payment code — 1006, 1023, 1027, and so on. This is what the filing utility and the portal expect from FY 2026-27 onward.
- In contracts, invoices, emails, and conversation with your CA, vendor, or accounts team: nobody's going to stop saying "194J" or "194C" for years — the old names are shorter, more familiar, and instantly understood. There's no compliance requirement to purge them from your paperwork's language, only from the field you type a number into on a challan.
- On the TDS certificate you receive: it's Form 132 now, regardless of which old form (16B, 16C, 16D, or 16E) it would previously have been — don't go looking for those form numbers on anything generated after the switch.
Treat the old section numbers the way you'd treat a company's old name after a rebrand: still useful for search and conversation, no longer what's printed on the actual paperwork.
The bottom line
Section 393(1) is one consolidated section with a Table 1 that replaces the 194-series you already know, referenced by four-digit payment codes instead of section numbers, from 1 April 2026 onward. 194C, 194H, 194I, 194J, 194Q, and 194-O each map to a specific code (194A to one of three, depending on payer/recipient), 194IB is filed through Form 141 instead of getting a code at all, and the certificate you issue afterward is Form 132 — one form doing what 16B, 16C, 16D, and 16E used to do separately. Keep saying "194J" out loud; just use 1027 on the challan.
Our TDS Calculator has the current rate, threshold, and Section 393(1) code for every one of these payment types built in, so you can work out what to deduct and which code to file under in one pass rather than cross-referencing this table by hand each time.
Sources
- Section No. 393, Income Tax Act 2025 — incometaxindia.gov.in
- Section 393 of Income Tax Act 2025 — TDS Rules, Rates & Compliance Guide — India Briefing
- Section 393 of Income Tax Act 2025 — Tax Deduction at Source — TaxGuru
- Form No. 132 — Certificate under Section 395(4) for TDS — TaxGuru
- Form No. 132 FAQs — incometaxindia.gov.in
- Form No. 130/131/132/133 (Earlier Form No. 16/16A/16B/16C/16D/16E/27D) — incometaxindia.gov.in
This post reflects the Income-tax Act, 2025's Section 393(1)/395(4) framework and Form 141/Form 132 mechanics as documented by the Income Tax Department and reported in tax press as of this writing (21–22 September 2026). Payment codes and thresholds here mirror what our own TDS Calculator uses internally — re-verify against your challan/return utility before filing, since portal rollout can trail the law by a few weeks.