What is Form 24Q?
Form 24Q is the quarterly return every employer files to report the TDS deducted from employees' salaries. It tells the tax department, employee by employee, what salary was paid and what tax was deducted and deposited against each PAN in the quarter. Four are filed a year, and the fourth quarter's return carries an annual salary annexure with the full year's detail, which is the source from which each employee's Form 16 is generated. If 24Q filings are accurate and on time, employees' tax credits appear correctly in their Form 26AS and their returns file smoothly; if not, the mismatches surface as notices.
What goes into it
Challan details of the TDS deposited, deductee-wise records mapping each deduction to an employee's PAN, and (in Q4) the salary annexure: gross salary, exemptions, deductions and tax computation per employee for the year. It is filed against the employer's TAN through the prescribed utilities or by the establishment's consultant.
Why employees should care about a form they never file
Every credit in your Form 26AS traces to your employer's 24Q. A payslip showing TDS deducted is a claim; the 24Q filing is what makes it true in the department's records. When Form 16 arrives, checking it against 26AS is really checking that the year's 24Qs were filed right.
What happens if Form 24Q is filed late or with errors?
Late filing attracts per-day fees and delays employees' tax credits; errors (wrong PANs, mismatched challans) surface as defaults notices and blocked credits — fixed by filing a correction return. The operational lesson: 24Q accuracy is a monthly data-quality property, not a quarterly heroic.
Go deeper: Form 16 explained · TDS guide · Statutory compliance
24Q data that accumulates itself.
PeopleDeck runs it on every payslip — per employee, per month.
Start free