Review Your Form 26AS Before Return Filing Season

Soon the government will release tax forms for return filing for financial year 2014-15. Before the actual process begins for tax filing, one of the important documents to review is your Form 26AS. Let's first understand what exactly is a Form 26AS. Every person who makes a payment may have to deduct TDS to comply with tax rules. TDS is deducted on salary by your employer and by banks on interest income you earn. If you work as a freelancer, your client may deduct TDS before making a payment to you. Except in the case of your employer, most of the other deductors do not know the tax slab applicable to you. Deductors usually deduct a TDS of 10 per cent where PAN is available, and if PAN information is not provided a TDS of 20 per cent is deducted. Form 26AS allows you to view details of all the TDS deducted from your income. It also has details of tax directly paid by you to the government as advance tax or self assessment tax. Form 26AS can be viewed by registering with TRACES or through net banking account of tax payers held with banks that have registered with TRACES. It's important to go through each and every entry on the Form 26AS and validate them. You must validate the detail of TDS deducted on your Form 16 (TDS on salary) against the TDS mentioned on Form 26AS. Similarly you can check TDS details on Form 16A (TDS other than salary) that the bank provided with Form 26AS. You can also review Form 26AS against your pay slips or bank statement where TDS deductions are mentioned. If the entries on your Form 26AS are matching, status 'F' is mentioned against status of booking under each of the entries. Do you see any entries with a status 'U' or a status 'P'? Or maybe some of the TDS which was deducted from your income does not show up on your Form 26AS. 'U' or unmatched status means there is a discrepancy in your Form 26AS. Deductors have not deposited taxes or have furnished incorrect particulars of tax payment. Final credit will be reflected only when payment details in bank match with details of deposit in TDS statement. 'P' or provisional status means that provisional tax credit is affected only for TDS Statements filed by government deductors. 'P' status will be changed to final (F) on verification of payment details submitted by pay and accounts officer (PAO). 'F' or final is the status you'd hope to see against all your TDS details. Here are some of the reasons for mismatch or status 'U' or 'P' or where some TDS details do not appear in your Form 26AS:. Deductor did not file quarterly TDS return Deductor has not quoted or has incorrectly quoted your PAN in the TDS You have not provided PAN or have provided wrong PAN to the deductor . If there are discrepancies in your Form 26AS, here are the steps you must take to resolve them:.Step 1: Make sure you have cross checked TDS information from Form 16 (provided by employer) and Form 16A (provided by banks) with your Form 26AS. Step 2: Now reach out to your deductor and inform them about the error. Step 3: The deductor has to reconcile and revise the TDS return filed by them to correct discrepancies. Step 4: Once the deductor revises the statement and submits to the department, this TDS will then get reflected in your Form 26AS correctly. Step 5: Once this TDS is reflected correctly, you will be able to adjust it from your final tax liability. Or you may also end up with a refund due from the government if you did not have any tax payable. Do note that the refund of excess TDS can be done by the IT Department, since this TDS has already been deposited by the deductor. Therefore the deductor will not be able to make any refunds to you. The Income Tax Department allows you to claim TDS which is reflected in your Form 26AS. If some TDS deducted from your income is not showing up in this form, a credit of such TDS against your tax dues may be disallowed by the department. Therefore, do review your Form 26AS timely. Disclaimer: All information in this article has been provided by Cleartax.in and NDTV Profit is not responsible for the accuracy and completeness of the same.

Review Your Form 26AS Before Return Filing Season

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