Four instalments, the cumulative percentages, and how 234B and 234C differ.
If your tax for the year after TDS will exceed ₹10,000, it is payable as you earn rather than at the end. Four instalments: 15% by 15 June, 45% cumulative by 15 September, 75% by 15 December and the whole of it by 15 March.
Note that those are cumulative figures, not four equal quarters. By 15 September you should have paid 45% in total, not 45% on top of the first 15%.
Advance tax — 1st instalment — miss it: 1% a month interest under sections 234B and 234C on the shortfall
Advance tax — 2nd instalment — miss it: 1% a month interest on the shortfall
Advance tax — 3rd instalment — miss it: 1% a month interest on the shortfall
Advance tax — final instalment — miss it: 1% a month interest on the shortfall
Section 234C penalises getting an individual instalment wrong — 1% a month for three months on the shortfall in that instalment. Section 234B penalises ending the year having paid less than 90% of the total, at 1% a month from April until you settle it.
You can be charged both: 234C for each instalment you underpaid through the year, and 234B for the overall shortfall at the end of it.
A resident senior citizen with no business or professional income is not required to pay advance tax at all. Taxpayers under the presumptive schemes have a simpler obligation — the whole liability in a single instalment by 15 March — rather than four.
15 June for 15%, 15 September for 45% cumulative, 15 December for 75% cumulative, and 15 March for 100%.
Anyone whose tax liability for the year, after TDS, will exceed ₹10,000. Resident senior citizens without business or professional income are exempt.
234C is charged on a shortfall in a particular instalment, at 1% a month for three months. 234B is charged where less than 90% of the total was paid by the end of the year, at 1% a month from April until it is paid.
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