Form 10E is the online form an employee files to claim relief under Section 89(1) of the Income-tax Act, 1961 when salary arrears or advance salary pushes the current year’s tax higher than it would have been had the money been paid on time. It has to be filed on the income tax portal before the return, and the relief figure it produces is then entered in the ITR.

Which form applies to which year

This is where people get confused right now. Form 10E is the correct form for arrears received in FY 2025-26 or earlier, which covers the returns being filed now for assessment year 2026-27. The Income-tax Act, 2025 took over on 1 April 2026, and for amounts received in tax year 2026-27 onward the relief provision is Section 157(1) and the form is Form 39 (Rule 73 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026), according to published guides. Check the current section and form list on the portal, because the first Form 39 claims will only come with the next filing season.

How the relief is worked out

The form compares two versions of the tax bill:

1. Tax payable for the year of receipt, with and without the arrears. The difference is the extra tax the arrears caused.
2. For each earlier year the arrears belong to, tax with and without that year’s share. The sum of those differences is the tax that would have been paid had the arrears been received on time.
3. If the first figure exceeds the second, the excess is the relief. If not, there is no relief and nothing to claim.

The portal does the arithmetic once you enter the year-wise split of the arrears, and it must use the year of receipt, not the year the pay revision relates to. Relief rarely arises when the arrears sit in the same slab as ordinary pay, so a quick check with the arrears calculator before filing saves effort.

What payroll should provide

The employee needs a month-by-month or year-by-year split of the arrears paid, along with the salary for those earlier years. Payroll teams should keep this in the arrears run’s working sheet or the payslip notes, since asking for it six months later usually means digging through old registers. Availability of the relief under each tax regime is worth confirming on the portal, because the two regimes have different slabs and the form’s tax computation depends on that.

Frequently asked questions

Can I file the ITR first and Form 10E later?

Not safely. The ITR asks for the acknowledgement of the filed form, and claiming relief without it risks the relief being disallowed. File the form first, then claim the same amount in the return.

Who files Form 10E, the employer or the employee?

The employee, from their own portal login. Employers do not file it, though they should give the arrears breakup. See Form 16 for how arrears appear in the year of receipt.

Is Form 10E needed for ordinary bonuses?

No. A regular bonus is taxed in the year of receipt. The form is for amounts that genuinely belong to earlier years, such as arrears, family pension and similar receipts.

Work out the arrears amount first with the arrears calculator, and see how tax is deducted on it in TDS on salary.