Taxpayers are ought to submit their respective Income Tax Return within the stipulated time frame to avoid penalties. There are basically two major documents that you need for filing your annual returns namely Form 16 and Form 26AS. These two documents are complementary and should match in all respects to ensure that your ITR is flawless.
Form 16 is a certificate (issued under section 203 of the Income Tax deducted at source (TDS) by the employer and submitted by him/her to the Income Tax Department (IT Department). It has details of how much tax did the employer deduct and when it was submitted to the Income Tax department.
Form 16 is a certificate (issued under section 203 of the Income Tax deducted at source (TDS) by the employer and submitted by him/her to the Income Tax Department. It has details of how much tax did the employer deduct and when it was submitted to the Income Tax department.
Form 26AS will provide information regarding the tax deducted at source (TDS), tax collected at source (TCS). This form includes info on tax deducted on your income by deductors, details of tax collected by collectors, advance tax paid by the taxpayer, self-assessment tax payments, regular assessment tax deposited by the taxpayers (PAN holders), details of the refund received by you during the financial year, and details of the High-value Transactions in respect of shares, mutual fund, etc.
If you find a mismatch of TDS in Form 26AS and Form 16/16A, you may first want to find out why the mistake happened. This will help you make the right steps towards correcting the discrepancy. For this, you must first compare both the forms and see which entries are not reflecting in Form 26AS.
The following are the common errors leading to TDS mismatch:
Once you compare the forms and identify the error, you must inform the person responsible for deducting TDS from your income, i.e. your employer. If the reason for the mismatch is a mistake from your employer’s side, it is easier and faster for them to make corrections. The employer has to file a revised TDS return. Ensure that the details are correct in the revised TDS return in order to avoid another mismatch. If you have received a notice from the Income Tax department about a tax credit mismatch, you can respond to it online through the Income Tax e-filing portal. You need to choose ‘Taxpayer is correcting data for Tax Credit Mismatch only’ under the options and fill in the relevant details.
Filing of the revised TDS Return will take some time, and even after the revised version is filed, it will take more time for the correction to reflect in Form 26AS. The best way to ensure that there is no discrepancy in TDS is to check your Form 26AS periodically. If you file your income tax return online, Form 26AS can be accessed from your Income Tax e-filing account.
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