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Use Sandbox’s API to generate Form 131 certificates from TRACES and download ZIP files containing certificate PDFs. Form 131 is the non-salary TDS certificate that replaces Form 16A under the Income-tax Act, 2025. See the Income Tax Department’s Form 131 FAQs for the statutory requirements.

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Before you start

  • Obtain a Sandbox access token using the Quickstart guide.
  • Confirm that TRACES has processed the relevant Form 140 or Form 144 statement and made the certificates available. This applies whether you filed through Sandbox or elsewhere.
  • Keep the TAN and its TRACES password ready.
Replace the sample TAN and period with your own values. Use the same TAN as the saved credentials.

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Generate the certificates

1

Add the TRACES credentials

Add the TAN and its password with the Add TRACES credentials endpoint.
Skip this step if valid credentials are already saved for the TAN. To replace saved credentials, follow the credential endpoint instructions.
2

Create a Form 131 certificate job

Call the Create TDS or TCS certificate job endpoint with 131 in the path. Set the JSON form field to "131".
Save data.job_id from the response. You need this value to check the job status.
3

Check the certificate job status

Call the Get TDS certificate job status endpoint with the job_id from the submit response.
Continue polling while the status is created, queued, or in_progress. When the status is failed, read data.message for the reason. Stop and resolve the error before submitting another job.
4

Download the certificate ZIP files

When the status is succeeded, the response contains one or more download URLs in data.certificate_pdf_zip_urls.Response excerpt:
Download each ZIP file and store it in your system.