Most guides to tds on property purchase in Delhi were written before April 2026 and still send you to Form 26QB. That form no longer exists for a property purchase. The deduction itself has not changed — one per cent, paid by the buyer, credited to the seller — but the filing, the form number and the certificate all sit inside a new Act now, and the people who will tell you otherwise are the ones whose software has not caught up.
If you are buying a floor in South Delhi, this is the part of the transaction that goes wrong quietly. Not at the registry, where the deed is checked, but three weeks later, when the seller opens his tax statement and finds nothing there.
Why the form changed
The Income-tax Act, 2025 replaced the 1961 Act with effect from 1 April 2026. The tax department used the rewrite to collapse four separate statement-cum-challan forms into one. Form 26QB, which was the property form, became Schedule B of Form 141. Rent became Schedule A, contractor payments Schedule C, and virtual digital assets Schedule D.
For a property buyer the practical effect is narrow. You file Form 141, tick the property schedule, and the details asked for are the same ones 26QB asked for: buyer PAN, seller PAN, address, consideration, stamp duty value, date of payment, date of deduction. No TAN is required, because the law exempts this particular deduction from it. Filing is by PAN.
The effect on the wider web is not narrow. Almost every page ranking for this query — including tax portals that publish a 2026 date stamp — still describes 26QB as the live route. If your accountant asks for a 26QB challan, he is working from the old Act.
What TDS on property purchase actually is
The buyer withholds one per cent of the consideration payable to a resident seller and deposits it with the government. That money is not the buyer’s tax. It is the seller’s tax, collected early. The buyer is only the collection point.
Two things follow from that. First, the seller’s PAN is the single most important detail in the transaction, because the credit lands against that PAN and nowhere else. Second, the buyer’s obligation does not end at deduction. It ends when the seller has a certificate in hand that his accountant can match against his statement.
How much, and on what value
The rate is one per cent. The base is the higher of what you actually pay and the stamp duty value of the floor. That second figure is the circle rate valuation the sub-registrar works from, so a deed written below the circle rate does not reduce the deduction — it just moves the base to a number you did not negotiate. Our note on the 2026 Delhi circle rate explains how that value is arrived at.
There is a threshold. No deduction is required where both the consideration and the stamp duty value are below fifty lakh rupees. The word that matters is both. If either one is at or above that figure, the deduction applies to the whole amount, not to the excess.
The other point that catches people is what counts as consideration. The section defines it to include the charges that come with the transfer — car parking, club membership, maintenance advance, electricity and water facility charges, and any similar charge incidental to the transfer. Agreements routinely split these into separate line items from the flat. For the deduction, they add up.
| What the agreement says | Does it count in the base? |
|---|---|
| The floor, as a single figure | Yes |
| Car parking, charged separately | Yes |
| Maintenance advance collected at handover | Yes |
| Club or facility membership | Yes |
| Stamp duty and registration paid by the buyer | No, these are the buyer’s own cost |
| Brokerage paid to a third party | No, not part of the transfer |
Filing Form 141 in the right order
The sequence matters more than the form does, because most of the failures are sequence failures.
- Collect the seller’s PAN and check it against the original card before the deed is drafted. An invalid or mismatched PAN pushes the deduction to twenty per cent under section 206AA, and that money is the buyer’s problem.
- Work out the base: the higher of consideration and stamp duty value, with the add-on charges included.
- Deduct at the time of credit or payment, whichever is earlier. Deducting on the day of registry when you paid a token six months ago is already late.
- File Form 141, Schedule B, within thirty days from the end of the month in which you deducted. Filing is on the income tax e-filing portal.
- Download the TDS certificate and hand it to the seller. He cannot claim the credit without it.
- Keep the acknowledgment number in the registry file. If the department later asks why the deduction is missing from the seller’s statement, that number is the only thing that answers the question.
Where a builder floor is not a flat
Four differences decide the filing.
The transferor is whoever signed the deed. On a collaboration project the landowner and the developer both have a hand in the building, and the sale deed may be executed by one, the other, or both. Deduct against the PAN of the person named as seller. If two names appear, two filings.
A resale from an individual is still the buyer’s job. A family that has sold one floor in its life will not know that it must be given a certificate, and will not ask for one until its accountant does. Raise it at the token stage, not at the registry.
A company seller changes nothing about the rate. One per cent applies to a resident company just as it does to a resident individual. What changes is that the company’s finance team will want the certificate before its quarter closes.
An NRI seller changes everything. The one per cent provision applies only where the seller is resident. Where the seller is a non-resident, the deduction moves to section 195, the base is the capital gain rather than the sale value, and the rate is whatever applies to that gain — usually far above one per cent. A chartered accountant’s certificate is needed before the money moves. If you deduct one per cent and the correct figure was higher, the shortfall is recovered from you, not from the seller who has already left the country. This comes up on floors inherited by siblings where one lives abroad; the heirs’ transfer sequence is worth reading before the deed is drafted.
Joint buyers and joint sellers
Two buyers and one seller is two filings. One buyer and two sellers is two filings. Two of each is four. Each buyer files for its own share against each seller’s PAN, and the aggregate of what all buyers pay is what the threshold is tested on.
The mistake is filing once on the total when two names are on the deed. The seller’s statement then shows a credit against one PAN and nothing against the other, and the correction is a request on the tax portal that runs for weeks.
What goes wrong, and what it costs later
- The seller’s PAN is mistyped or belongs to a closed company. The deduction becomes twenty per cent and the buyer absorbs the difference.
- The money is deducted but not deposited within thirty days of the month end. Interest runs, and a late-filing fee applies for each day the statement is outstanding.
- The deposit is tagged to the wrong seller or the wrong assessment year. The seller’s statement shows nothing, he reads it as non-payment, and the last payment against the floor is withheld.
- The certificate is never downloaded. The seller’s accountant cannot claim the credit and the file sits open on both sides for a year.
- The buyer treats it as the seller’s responsibility. It is not. The obligation is on the person paying.
Before you sign: five lines to check
- Seller’s PAN verified against the original card, in the name that appears on the deed.
- Base worked out on the higher of consideration and circle rate value, with parking and maintenance advance added.
- Deduction made at credit or payment, whichever came first.
- Schedule B filed within thirty days of that month’s end, acknowledgment saved.
- Certificate downloaded and handed over, with a copy in the registry file.
The short version
One per cent, on the higher of what you pay and the circle rate value, filed in Form 141 within thirty days, certificate given to the seller. Everything else is detail that only matters when it is wrong.
If you are buying one of our floors, we walk through the deduction with you before the deed is drafted rather than after, and we will tell you plainly when the seller’s status means one per cent is the wrong rate. Speak to us for price, availability and the paperwork sequence.
