Income Tax Return e-Filing for AY 2019-20: The last date for the employers to handover the Form 16 to their employees is July 10. If you have already received it or will receive it in the next few days, ensure that it is downloaded from TRACES. The income tax department has cautioned about the downloading or generating of Form 16 and wants to make sure that it is only from TRACES. The I-T department wants the employees to insist the employers to download Form 16 from TRACES if the same is generated using different software. The income tax return filing last date is July 31 for the AY 2019-20.

TRACES – TDS Reconciliation Analysis and Correction Enabling system, is a web-based application of the Income Tax Department that provides an interface to all stakeholders associated with TDS administration. It enables viewing of challan status, Form 16 or Form 16A as well as viewing of annual tax credit statements (Form 26AS).

For salaried taxpayers, Form 16 and Form 26 AS are important statements to look at and match them. Form 16 will contain the break-up of income received from the employer, tax deducted and the deductions in the financial year 2018-19. Form 26AS can be generated by registering with TRACES or if you have already registered with the I-T department e-filing website. Form 26AS contains details of:

Tax deducted by deductors on behalf of taxpayer
Tax collected by collectors on behalf of taxpayer
Advance / Self-Assessment tax deposited by taxpayer
Refund paid by ITD to Tax Payer
How to check the validity

To check the validity of Form 16 downloaded from TRACES, one may look at these two things:

Valid certificate downloaded from TRACES will have a 7 character alphabet unique certificate number.
It will have a TDS-CPS logo on the left hand side and the national emblem on the right side.
It is also important to get the Form 16 downloaded from TRACES because the rules have recently been changed and Form 16 has a new format. There are two parts of Form 16 – Part A and B. The information to be provided in Part-B of Form-16 was revised by CBDT recently and had also issued a notification for employers to download and issue Part-B of Form 16 to employees only from the TRACES portal. Part B will henceforth carry a break up of all allowances, perquisites etc paid by the employer to the employee. Also, the employers had been asked to file Form 24Q with a salary bifurcation in the last quarter of the FY 2018-19.

Therefore, make sure the FORM 16 that you have received is a valid certificate else ask your employer to get it generated only from TRACES before you go fo e-filing of Income Tax Return 2019-20.