Your bank statement shows ₹90,000 but the brand said ₹1L. Here’s what’s happening — and what to ask for.

You closed a brand deal for ₹1,00,000. The brand sent the payment last week. The bank statement shows ₹90,000.

The ₹10,000 isn’t lost. It hasn’t been pocketed. It’s sitting against your PAN in the Income Tax Department’s system, as TDS withheld at source by the brand, under one of four specific sections of the Income Tax Act. You can claim it back at ITR-filing time. Most creators don’t, because the workflow to claim it requires three things that aren’t handed to you by default: a Form 16A from the brand, a clean read of your Form 26AS / AIS, and a working mental model of which section was applied and why.

This post is the working mental model. It’s the longest of the launch posts deliberately — the value of getting this right, compounded across a creator career, is in lakhs.

The four §194 sections that touch creator income

There are exactly four sections most creators will encounter. Each one withholds at a different rate, applies to a different kind of payment, and has a different threshold. Recognising which one a brand applied tells you what to ask for next.

Section	What it applies to	Rate	Threshold (per FY)
§194J	Fees for professional / technical services (your cash fee)	10%	₹30,000
§194R	Benefits / perquisites in cash or kind (gifted products, comps)	10%	₹20,000
§194O	Payment by an e-commerce operator to a participant	1%	₹5,00,000
§206AA	Penal rate when PAN is missing or invalid	20%	n/a (overrides above)

The ₹10,000 in your example is almost certainly §194J at 10% on the ₹1,00,000 cash fee. If it had been 20%, your PAN didn’t reach the brand in time. If it was 1%, you were paid through a platform that classed itself as an e-commerce operator. If it was on a gift, not cash, it was §194R.

What you should be receiving from every brand or agency

The legal-minimum paperwork after any TDS-attracted payment to you is:

1. Form 16A. This is the deductor’s certificate confirming the TDS withheld. The brand or agency’s deductor is supposed to issue it quarterly, within 15 days of filing the 26Q TDS return. So a deduction that happened in July (Q1) should land on Form 16A by ~15 August. In reality, creators receive Form 16A in March, eight months late, after chasing for it. That delay is normal but not legal — and you can ask for it after 30 days.

2. A deduction summary. A line-item read of which payment carried which section at which rate. This isn’t a regulated artifact, but any serious deductor will share it on request. The reason it matters: when you cross-reference your bank statement against your 26AS, every withheld amount has to map to a section. If it doesn’t, you don’t know what you’re claiming.

3. A GST tax invoice IF the brand is the recipient and you are GST-registered. This applies to creators above the GST registration threshold (₹20 lakh aggregate turnover, lower in some states). If you’re issuing an invoice, the brand is expected to provide the GSTIN for the recipient side and you’re expected to remit GST on the fee. If you’re below the threshold and unregistered, GST doesn’t apply to your side and the brand bears no recipient-side responsibility — but they may still issue an internal voucher for their records.

If you’re getting paid into your bank account and getting none of these three artifacts, the deduction is still happening on your PAN — you just don’t have the paper to claim it. The fix is to ask. Specifically, the ask is: “Please send the Form 16A for FY 2026–27, and a deduction summary for each campaign you’ve paid me on this FY.”

The Form 26AS / AIS reconciliation walkthrough

Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement (AIS) are the two read surfaces the Income Tax Department gives you for every rupee of TDS, TCS, and high-value transactions reported against your PAN. They’re free, they update through the year, and they are the only authoritative record of how much TDS is sitting in the system on your behalf.

To pull them:

1. Log into the Income Tax e-filing portal (incometax.gov.in) with your PAN. If you’ve never logged in, the first login is the form-filing account creation; same credentials.
2. Once in: Services → Annual Information Statement (AIS). The AIS is the modern, richer view; 26AS is the legacy one. Use AIS.
3. Filter by the financial year. AIS shows a section-by-section breakdown of every TDS event reported against your PAN by every deductor.
4. Match each row against your bank statement and your records of brand payments. The columns to look at are: deductor name, section, amount paid, TDS deducted, deduction date.

The four most common reconciliation surprises:

• A deduction showed up that you didn’t expect. Some brand paid you through an agency whose name you don’t recognise. Walk it back — agencies often pay under their own legal name, not the brand’s. Match on date and amount.
• A deduction is missing that you do expect. The deductor hasn’t filed 26Q yet (it takes a month after quarter-end to appear), or they filed but typed your PAN wrong. The latter is fixable; you write to the deductor with the right PAN and they file a correction return.
• The rate is 20% instead of 10%. Your PAN wasn’t on file at the time of deduction. The amount is still claimable; you just take a temporary cashflow hit until refund time. Get the PAN to the deductor for the next deduction.
• The deduction shows on 26AS but the bank credit is for the full amount. This is rare but happens: the brand grossed-up. Treat as income at the grossed-up rate; claim TDS as filed.

The PAN-vs-no-PAN cost is real

If you give a brand or agency the wrong PAN, no PAN, or an inactive PAN (linkage failure with Aadhaar is the modal cause in 2026), the deductor must apply §206AA at 20%. On a ₹1 lakh fee, that’s ₹20,000 withheld instead of ₹10,000. The extra ₹10,000 is still claimable — you’re not out the money permanently — but the cashflow impact across a year of campaigns is real.

The fix is two minutes of work: log into the e-filing portal, check your PAN-Aadhaar linkage status, and if linked-but-stale, re-trigger the link. If you’ve never given a particular brand your PAN, do it before the campaign payment runs.

What to ask for upfront — the four-line creator checklist

The hardest part of getting your TDS right is that the system makes you do it after the deal closes, when leverage is gone. The fix is to do it before:

1. Confirm the section at agreement. “Is this fee being booked under §194J?” The answer should be yes for a cash content fee, yes for product fee unless it’s clearly a benefit (then §194R).
2. Confirm your PAN is on their records. “Can you confirm the PAN you have on file for me?” If they don’t have it or have the wrong one, send it before they cut the cheque.
3. Get a Form 16A commitment. “Which quarter will the Form 16A for this payment be issued in?” The answer should be the quarter after the payment quarter.
4. For in-kind benefits, get a stated FMV. Gifted product, comp travel, event invite — if the brand or agency calls it a benefit worth ₹X, you want that ₹X in writing. That FMV is what they’ll report as the §194R deduction base; it’s also what shows up on your AIS.

These four asks take five minutes per campaign. They save hours at ITR time and prevent the “why is there a deduction I can’t explain” problem entirely.

If your agency is on SutraOS

Most creators don’t deal with this layer directly because an agency sits between them and the brand, and the agency handles the §194R / §194J attribution, the Form 16A issuance, and the 26AS reconciliation on the creator’s behalf.

If your agency uses SutraOS, all four of the asks above are automated: the section is attributed at agreement, your PAN is verified pre-payout (with a §206AA warning if it’s missing), Form 16A is issued automatically in the quarter it’s due, and you get a creator dashboard that mirrors your AIS so you can spot mismatches early. If your agency isn’t on SutraOS, the asks above are how you replicate the same hygiene manually.

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If you’re a creator and the “₹1L deal, ₹90K hit account” problem feels familiar, send this post to your agency’s ops lead. We’re accepting 3–5 talent agencies as design partners through July — the program is here.