Form 16 Guide 2026: How to Read Part A and Part B Before You File Your ITR

By Nitish Bharadwaj · Published Jul 23, 2026 · 6 min

Form 16 is the TDS certificate your employer must issue under Section 203 by June 15 of the assessment year if tax was deducted from your salary. Part A, from TRACES, is government-verified — employer PAN/TAN, employment period, and quarter-wise TDS. Part B is the employer's own annexure: gross salary, exemptions, standard deduction, Chapter VI-A claims, and which tax regime was used. Before filing, reconcile both against Form 26AS and AIS — mismatches are common after a job change — and Form 16 isn't even mandatory; salary slips and Form 26AS work too.

Form 16 is the one document nearly every salaried employee hands over — to a tax filer, a CA, or the income tax portal itself — without ever opening it past the first page. That's usually fine, until it isn't: Part A and Part B of Form 16 come from two different sources, can disagree with each other, and neither one is automatically the final word on your tax liability. Here's what each part actually contains, the reconciliation step most filers skip, and what to do if your employer hasn't issued one at all.

What Form 16 Actually Is

Form 16 is a TDS certificate, issued under Section 203 of the Income Tax Act, that your employer is legally required to give you if any tax was deducted from your salary during the financial year. It certifies, against your PAN, how much you earned and how much tax was deducted and deposited with the government on your behalf. Employers must issue it by June 15 of the assessment year — for FY 2025-26 income (AY 2026-27), that means by June 15, 2026, well ahead of the July 31 filing deadline covered in our complete ITR filing guide.

Part A vs Part B — Two Different Sources, Two Different Purposes

Part A matters because it's the government's own record of what was deposited against your PAN — if this doesn't match Form 26AS or AIS, that's a genuine discrepancy worth chasing with your employer's payroll or finance team before you file. Part B matters for a different reason: it reflects choices you made — the regime you or your employer selected for TDS calculation, and the exemptions and deductions you declared during the year — which may not match what you actually intend to claim in your return.

Reconcile Form 16 Against 26AS and AIS Before You File

Before entering a single number into your return, cross-check three documents: Form 16 (what your employer reports), Form 26AS (the government's consolidated TDS statement across all deductors, not just your employer), and the Annual Information Statement, or AIS (a broader summary that also includes interest, dividends, and high-value transactions reported to the tax department). If you switched jobs during the year, this step is not optional — you need a separate Form 16 from each employer, and Form 26AS is the only place that reliably ties both together; our guide to the tax shortfall two Form 16s can create covers why each employer's TDS looks fine in isolation but can fall well short once combined. Our dedicated Form 26AS vs AIS reconciliation guide walks through exactly where the two documents diverge and how to fix a mismatch before filing.

• Match the TDS amount in Form 16 Part A against Form 26AS — any mismatch usually means your employer deposited tax late, or under a wrong PAN, and needs correcting before you claim credit for it
• Check that the tax regime shown in Form 16 Part B matches what you actually want to file under — you can still choose differently in the ITR itself if you're a salaried employee with no business income
• Check AIS for savings account interest, FD interest, dividend income, or securities transactions that Form 16 doesn't capture at all, since those still need to be reported separately
• If you changed jobs, add the TDS from all Form 16s together and verify the combined figure reconciles against the single consolidated Form 26AS for the year

Filing ITR Without Form 16

Form 16 makes filing easier, but it isn't legally mandatory — some employers skip issuing it for employees whose income falls below the taxable threshold, and it's fairly common for freelancers moving into salaried roles mid-year to have gaps. Without it, use your salary slips to total gross salary and any TDS shown on them, Form 26AS to confirm the TDS actually deposited against your PAN, and AIS to check other income sources. If your employer deducted tax but never issued Form 16 at all — which they're required to do by law — you can raise a grievance directly through the income tax e-filing portal.

Once your figures reconcile, the rest of the filing process — choosing between ITR-1 and ITR-2, picking a tax regime, and claiming the standard deduction correctly for whichever regime you choose — follows the same steps laid out in our full ITR filing walkthrough. If your refund is delayed after filing, a Form 16 vs 26AS mismatch is one of the more common causes covered in our ITR refund delay guide.