TDS Calculator FY 2024-25

Threshold Is a Cliff, Not a Slab

For non-salary payments like professional fees, contractor payments, rent, or commission, the threshold works differently from income-tax slabs. Once your payment in a year crosses the threshold, TDS applies to the entire amount — not just the portion above the threshold. This is the opposite of how income tax slabs work, where each slab only taxes the income within that band.

Salary is the exception: TDS on salary follows the same slab logic as your annual income tax, deducted proportionately each month based on your projected annual salary.

Worked Examples

A ₹1,00,000 payment under two different categories:

A ₹1,00,000 monthly salary (₹12,00,000 annual), old-regime slabs:

Notice the professional-fees TDS (10% of the full ₹1,00,000) is much higher than the contractor rate (2%) on the same amount — the category you're paid under changes your TDS materially, so getting the classification right matters as much as the amount itself.

Claiming TDS Credit

TDS deducted by whoever pays you is deposited against your PAN and shows up in your Form 26AS (and the Annual Information Statement). When you file your return, you report your full income and claim the TDS already deducted as a credit against your final tax liability — if more was deducted than you actually owe, you get the excess refunded; if less, you pay the balance. TDS is an advance collection mechanism, not a final settlement of your tax.

A Note on This Calculator's Scope

This tool estimates TDS for common payment categories using standard rates and thresholds. It doesn't account for lower/nil TDS certificates, PAN-not-furnished penal rates, or category-specific nuances (for example, rent TDS has different rates for individual/HUF payers versus other entities, and thresholds are assessed per payer per year, not per payment). For an unusual situation or a large transaction, confirm the applicable rate and threshold before relying on this estimate.

Who Deducts, Who Deposits, Who Reports

TDS shifts part of the tax-collection responsibility onto the person or entity making a payment, rather than relying solely on the recipient to report and pay tax at year-end. Whoever pays you — an employer, a client, a tenant, a bank — is legally required to deduct the applicable percentage before releasing the payment, deposit that amount with the government against your PAN within a prescribed timeline, and file a periodic TDS return reporting the deduction. As the recipient, you don't do any of this yourself for that specific payment; your role is to verify the deduction actually shows up correctly against your PAN and claim it as credit when you file your own return.

This is why furnishing your correct PAN to whoever pays you matters so much — an incorrect or missing PAN means the deductor either can't credit the deduction to you properly, or is required to deduct at a higher penal rate specifically because PAN details are missing.

Why the Section Numbering on This Page Is Marked TBC

This site targets the Income Tax Act 2025 framework applicable from Tax Year 2026-27 onward, under which many provisions have been renumbered relative to the 1961 Act's familiar section references (192, 194C, 194J, and so on). The rates and thresholds shown for FY 2026-27 in the reference table above are the same figures that applied under the 1961 Act's provisions, since a recodification exercise is not expected to change the underlying commercial rates — but the exact new section citation for each payment category hasn't been independently verified against the Act's text, so those cells are marked "TBC" rather than guessed. Rely on the rate and threshold columns, and confirm the section reference separately if you need it for a filing or compliance document.

TDS on Salary Works Differently From Everything Else

Every other category on this page uses a threshold-then-flat-rate structure — cross the threshold and a fixed percentage applies to the whole payment. Salary TDS doesn't work this way at all: your employer estimates your full-year salary and other declared income, computes your projected annual tax liability using the same progressive slabs as the income-tax calculator, and deducts roughly one-twelfth of that liability each month (adjusted through the year as your actual pay, declarations, and proofs come in). This means salary TDS automatically reflects your actual slab rate rather than a flat percentage, and a mid-year salary hike or bonus can noticeably increase your TDS for the remaining months as your employer's projection is revised upward.

TDS Certificates: Form 16 and Form 16A

Whoever deducts TDS on your income is also required to issue you a certificate confirming what was deducted and deposited — Form 16 for salary TDS, issued annually by your employer, and Form 16A for TDS on non-salary payments (professional fees, contractor payments, rent, and so on), typically issued quarterly by the deductor. These certificates are your documentary backup for the TDS credit you claim in your return, alongside Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement — when the figures across these sources don't match, that mismatch is one of the more common reasons a return gets flagged for clarification.

It's worth checking your Form 26AS or AIS against the TDS certificates you've received before filing, rather than assuming every deduction made on your behalf has been correctly deposited and reported by the deductor — errors and delays on the deductor's side do happen, and they show up as a mismatch rather than an outright missing credit.

Higher TDS for Certain Non-Compliant Recipients

Beyond the PAN-missing penal rate already mentioned, tax law has at various points also prescribed a higher TDS rate for recipients who haven't kept up with their own return-filing obligations in preceding years, as a way of nudging habitual non-filers toward compliance rather than letting TDS alone stand in for filing. The specific conditions, income thresholds, and rate differential for this kind of provision are the sort of detail that shifts with each Finance Act and with the ongoing 2025 Act recodification, so if you're a deductor unsure whether a payee falls into a higher-rate category, or a recipient wondering why your TDS looks higher than the standard rate, confirm the current position rather than assuming the standard rate always applies.

Applying for a Lower or Nil TDS Deduction Certificate

If your actual tax liability for the year is genuinely going to be lower than what standard TDS rates would deduct — a common situation for someone with substantial business losses, large eligible deductions, or income that's simply lower than the threshold that triggers the standard rate — you can apply to the tax department for a certificate authorizing your payer to deduct TDS at a lower rate, or at nil, rather than the standard rate. This is a proactive application process handled separately from your return filing, and needs to be renewed each year rather than being a one-time approval, and typically needs to be in place before the payment is made rather than applied for retroactively. Waiting until year-end to discover you were over-deducted means recovering the excess only through a refund when you file, rather than avoiding the cash-flow drag of the deduction in the first place.