Verifying your tax credit is important…Here’s why!

Quite some time has passed after you filed your income tax returns. Now it is time to hear from the Income Tax (IT) department on your already filed returns. Hence it is important to prepare for the same by taking few steps which can ensure that you do not receive any shock from the IT department in the form of income tax demand for non-credit of taxes.

The credit for all the taxes paid is given by the IT department on the basis of amounts reflecting as credit to your account in the records maintained by the IT department.The department sends you the details of such credits during the year in the Form of Form No 26 AS by e-mail if your e-mail ID is registered with them. Form No 26 AS is an all-inclusive statement of credits of all the taxes paid on your behalf either by yourself or deducted while paying income to you. This form is dynamic and the deductor with the income tax department files changes every time any tax is paid on your behalf and relevant documents.

How can you gain access to your Form No 26 AS?

As your credit of income tax or tax deducted at source depends on the records available with the IT department, it is very important for you to verify the credits of tax deducted or paid from the TDS certificates available with you with those getting reflected in the Form No 26 AS.

How to gain access to Form No 26 AS?

You can access Form No 26 AS online by visiting the link to the NSDL site: http://www.tin-nsdl.com

You have to follow a three-step process:

First step is online registration. As a PAN account holder, you can register on the NSDL web site by filling up the registration form. Fill up all the mandatory fields like your PAN number, Name, Address, E-mail ID and your landline or mobile number.

This registration on the above website is one time activity. Once you have submitted all the requisite details on the site, you get an acknowledgement generated by the site, which you need to save and take a print.

Verification by TIN-FC

The second step is verification by the authorised centers called TIN-FC. There are two options with respect to verification. Either you can visit any of the TIN-FC yourself or can choose to request any representative of TIN-FC (TIN Facilitation Centres) to visit your place for such verification. This option has to be exercised while filling up the registration Form online. You get a choice to select from a list of TIN-FC in your area.

View tax credit

After three days of the registration and authorization process, you can go and visit the site and view the tax credit in your account. In case you find that entries in respect of some of the TDS or advance tax are not reflected in the statement, it may be due to either non-payment or non-filing of the TDS return by the deductor. This may also happen due to some errors while filing the TDS returns of while filling up the challan for payment of tax.

Resetting the registration

In case you are not able to gain access to your account later on, you can always re-register by following the same process and after payment of the requisite fees.

Source : Rediff business