Your 15 September advance tax, in 20 minutes flat

The second advance-tax (advance tax: Tax you pay yourself during the year, in instalments, on income nobody is cutting TDS from.) instalment for FY 2026-27 is due on Monday 15 September. If you’ve been putting off finding out whether that sentence applies to you, this is the walkthrough: twenty minutes, one chai, done before the weekend’s over.

Minute 0–2: check whether this is even your deadline

Three quick exits.

• Under presumptive taxation (presumptive taxation: A scheme that lets you declare a fixed share of your receipts as income without proving any expenses. From FY 2026-27 it lives in one place, section 58; the old 44ADA covered professionals and 44AD small businesses.) (44ADA or 44AD, now both section 58 (section 58: The Income-tax Act, 2025 provision that from 1 April 2026 replaces sections 44AD, 44ADA and 44AE with a single table. Professionals are serial 3 of that table, still at 50% of gross receipts.))? Your only instalment is 15 March. Close this tab, enjoy your Sunday. (Here’s our plain-words 44ADA guide if you’re not sure.)
• Salaried only, no side income? TDS (TDS: Tax deducted at source: the slice of tax your employer or client cuts from a payment before it reaches you. It is tax you have already paid without doing anything.) has you covered. Not your deadline either.
• Everyone else: if your year’s tax after TDS will cross ₹10,000, keep reading.

Minute 2–10: estimate the year’s income honestly

Two numbers.

Salary, if you have one: your CTC (CTC: Cost to company: your full salary package. Only part of it is taxable, and your employer already works that part out for TDS.)’s taxable part, which your employer already handles via TDS. You just need it for the total.

Freelance income: what you’ve earned from April to now, projected to March. Earned means client payments for work, not bank credits. Family transfers, loan money, refunds, transfers between your own accounts and your salary credits don’t belong here (the full taxonomy is in this piece). If your records are a camera roll and a WhatsApp archive, a rough-but-honest number beats a precise fantasy: total the invoices you know about, add what’s clearly billable this half, and note it down.

Deduct your legitimate business expenses (or apply the 50% presumption if you’re eligible and opting for the presumptive scheme, though then see exit one above).

Minute 10–14: work out the tax

Take the total income, pick your regime (regime: India runs two income tax rate systems, old and new, and you pick one each year. Our calculator shows both, so you do not need to remember which is which.), and get the year’s tax. You can do this from the slab tables, or use our free calculator, which handles both regimes and the edge cases: cleantab.in/tax-calculator. No sign-in, nothing stored.

Call the result T.

Minute 14–17: subtract TDS

Log into the income tax portal and open your AIS/26AS (AIS / 26AS: Your tax passbook: a statement on the income tax portal showing all the tax already collected against your PAN.). Total the TDS already deducted this year plus what will clearly be deducted by March: your employer’s monthly TDS, and the 10% clients typically cut on professional fees. Call it D.

Your remaining liability for the year is T minus D. If that’s under ₹10,000, you’re done: advance tax doesn’t apply. People are regularly surprised in the pleasant direction here; client TDS adds up.

Minute 17–18: the instalment

What should be paid by 15 September is 45% of (T minus D), less anything you already paid in June. Missed June? Paying the full 45% now squares you; the interest on the June shortfall is small and already fixed.

Worked shape (with made-up numbers): year’s tax T = ₹1,60,000; TDS D = ₹90,000; remainder ₹70,000; due by 15 September: 45% = ₹31,500, minus the ₹10,000 paid in June = ₹21,500 now.

Minute 18–20: pay it

On incometax.gov.in, open e-Pay Tax from Quick Links (no login needed), verify with PAN and a mobile OTP, choose the Income Tax tile, then the two dropdowns that matter: tax year (tax year: The single 12-month period you earn in and are taxed on, running 1 April to 31 March. It replaced the old previous-year and assessment-year pair on 1 April 2026, so income earned now sits in Tax Year 2026-27, with no second year to work out.) 2026-27 (not 2027-28; the assessment year is gone since 1 April 2026) and type of payment Advance Tax (100). Enter the amount in the Tax field, pay by net banking, debit card or UPI via the payment gateway, and download the challan (challan: The receipt you get when you pay tax. You keep it, and its number goes into your return at filing time.): the reference numbers on it go into your return at filing time.

That’s it: no forms, no appointment. If you want the fully illustrated version of these clicks, it’s in our advance tax guide.

If the estimate scares you

Two comforts. First, an instalment is a payment toward tax you’d owe anyway; September just spreads it out and spares you 1%-a-month interest. Second, estimates self-correct: December and March instalments true-up as the year firms up. The only losing move is the one most people make, which is not estimating at all and meeting the whole number for the first time in March.

Doing this once a year vs having it all year

Everything above is reconstruction: digging out invoices, guessing at expenses, projecting income from memory. The twenty minutes are only twenty if your records are findable.

CleanTab’s whole premise is that the number should simply exist, all year. Snap receipts as they happen and they read themselves. Import your bank statement and every deposit gets a written reason to count as income or stay out. The Tax Jar keeps a running estimate with these exact instalment dates built in, and come filing season, one share hands your CA a tidy, read-only Drive folder (here’s the free checklist of what a CA actually needs). Your records live in your own Google Drive, not our database.

Deadline’s Monday. Twenty minutes. Go.

General information, not tax advice. Estimates are estimates: your CA has the last word, and CleanTab prepares while a human files.