If you've been invoicing brands for a while, you've probably seen "TDS @ 10% u/s 194J" printed on invoices and payment remittance advices. That citation is now out of date. The Income Tax Act, 2025 came into force on 1 April 2026 and renumbered the entire Act, and the old Section 194J (TDS on fees for professional and technical services) is now Section 393(1). The mechanics haven't changed. The paperwork citing the old section number has.
The new Income Tax Act consolidated the old TDS sections (192 through 196D) into a single Section 393, with individual provisions distinguished by table entries rather than separate section numbers the way 194A, 194C, 194J and so on used to work.
For creators, the practical effect is narrow: when a brand pays you for a sponsored post, a collab, or any service that counts as "professional" income, they still deduct TDS at 10% before paying you, and they still deposit it with the government under your PAN. The only difference is that the invoice, the TDS return, and Form 26AS now cite Section 393(1) instead of 194J. Brands that still print "194J" on their remittance paperwork are just running outdated templates, not doing anything wrong with the actual deduction.
Most straightforward brand collaboration fees fall under the 10% professional-services rate. Some deals are structured differently, for example if a brand treats the arrangement more like a works contract than a professional service, which can attract a lower rate (1% or 2% depending on the payer). This is a categorization question, and it's decided by how the brand's finance team classifies the payment, not something you control from the invoice. If a brand deducts a different rate than you expected, that's worth a quick conversation with them or your CA rather than assuming it's an error.
Every rupee deducted as TDS shows up in your Form 26AS, tied to your PAN. When you file your return, you claim that amount as tax already paid, which either reduces what you owe or increases your refund. The catch is that Form 26AS often lags behind actual payments by weeks, and if a brand makes an error in their TDS filing, the mismatch can sit there quietly until you go looking for it.
The practical habit worth building is checking the TDS actually deducted against what you expected on each invoice, rather than only looking at the total once a year before filing. A gap of more than a rupee or two on a single deal is usually worth flagging to the brand before it compounds across a dozen deals.
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