Form 16: The Complete Guide for FY 2025-26

What Is Form 16?

Form 16 is the TDS certificate your employer issues after deducting tax at source from your salary under Section 192 of the Income Tax Act. It's the single most important document for a salaried person filing an income tax return — it summarizes your salary, the exemptions and deductions your employer accounted for, and the tax already deposited to the government on your behalf. Every employer who deducts TDS on salary must issue Form 16 by law; if no TDS was deducted (because your income was below the taxable threshold), the employer isn't legally required to issue one, though many still do.

Part A vs Part B — What's the Difference?

Part A	Part B
Generated and downloaded by the employer from the TRACES portal	Prepared by the employer directly (not from TRACES)
Employer and employee PAN, employer TAN, employment period	Detailed salary breakup — basic, HRA, allowances, perquisites
Quarter-wise summary of TDS deducted and deposited	Deductions claimed (80C, 80D, HRA exemption, standard deduction) and final tax computation
Has a unique TDS certificate number, digitally verifiable on TRACES	No TRACES verification — employer-generated, so cross-check figures against your payslips

Part A is auto-generated from the TDS returns (Form 24Q) your employer files quarterly — this is why Form 16 can only be issued after all four quarterly TDS returns for the year are filed. Part B is where employers sometimes make errors, since it's manually compiled — always verify deduction amounts against your actual investment proofs before filing your return using these figures.

Form 16 Due Date

Employers must issue Form 16 by 15 June following the end of the financial year — for FY 2025-26, that's 15 June 2026. This gives you roughly six weeks before the usual 31 July ITR filing deadline to reconcile the figures and gather any additional documents.

What If My Employer Hasn't Issued Form 16?

If TDS was deducted from your salary but Form 16 wasn't issued by the due date, you have two practical options:

• Check Form 26AS or AIS on the income tax portal — both show TDS credited against your PAN, even without Form 16 in hand, and can be used to file your return
• Request Form 16 formally from HR/payroll — non-issuance doesn't waive the employer's obligation, and delayed issuance attracts a penalty on the employer under Section 272A, though this doesn't directly help you meet your own filing deadline

You can file your ITR using Form 26AS/AIS data alone if Form 16 genuinely never arrives — Form 16 is a convenience document that consolidates what's already reported to the department, not the only proof of TDS.

Form 16 vs Form 16A — Don't Confuse Them

Form 16 is exclusively for salary TDS under Section 192. Form 16A is the equivalent certificate for TDS on non-salary payments — rent, professional fees, contractor payments, interest — and is issued quarterly rather than annually. If you have both salary and freelance/consulting income with TDS deducted, you'll need Form 16 from your employer and Form 16A from each non-salary payer.

Using Form 16 to File Your ITR

Part B's salary breakup maps almost directly onto the salary schedule in your ITR form, and the TDS shown in Part A should match what's pre-filled from Form 26AS/AIS on the income tax portal — a mismatch between the two is the most common reason ITR processing gets delayed or a notice gets issued, so reconcile before submitting.

If you'd rather not manually cross-check Part A against Part B against Form 26AS yourself, our ITR filing service includes this reconciliation as a standard step before your return is filed.