Form 16 Password: How to Open and Download It

Salaried taxpayers can open the certificate using a Form 16 password made up of the first five uppercase PAN characters and date of birth in DDMMYYYY format. The document confirms tax deducted by an employer and should be reconciled with Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement before filing returns.

The password for your Form 16 PDF is the first five characters of your PAN in capitals, followed by your date of birth as DDMMYYYY. If your PAN is ABCDE1234F and you were born on 6 December 1996, type ABCDE06121996. No spaces, no slashes, and the letters must be uppercase.

That is the answer most people arrive here for. The rest of this page covers what the document actually is, why you cannot download it yourself, what to do when your employer has not sent it, and how Form 16 differs from Form 16A, 16B and 16C, which are four genuinely different certificates that share a confusing name.

If the password does not work

The PAN-plus-birthdate format is the TRACES default. Employers are allowed to override it, and larger companies often do. Work through this list before assuming the file is corrupt:

• Check the covering email. Payroll teams that set a custom password almost always state it in the email body. This is the single most common fix.
• Use your own PAN, not your employer’s. The certificate is yours; the password is keyed to the employee.
• Capitals matter. abcde06121996 will fail. ABCDE06121996 will not.
• Use the date of birth your employer has on file. If HR recorded a different DOB from the one on your PAN, the password follows their record. This trips up people whose PAN shows a corrected date.
• Watch the day and month order. It is DDMMYYYY, not MMDDYYYY. A birthday on 6 December is 06121996, not 12061996.

If none of that opens it, ask payroll to re-issue. Do not run the file through a random “PDF password remover” website. You would be uploading a document containing your PAN, your full salary and your tax details to a stranger’s server.

What Form 16 actually is

Form 16 is the certificate your employer issues to prove it deducted tax from your salary and paid that money to the government. It is issued under Section 203 of the Income-tax Act, 1961, read with Rule 31 of the Income-tax Rules, 1962.

The important idea: Form 16 is not a tax return and it is not a demand. It is evidence. It tells you, and the Income Tax Department, that a specific amount was deducted from your pay under Section 192 and deposited against your PAN. When you file your return, the figures in Form 16 should reconcile with what appears in your Form 26AS and your Annual Information Statement.

If your employer deducted no tax at all during the year, because your income stayed below the taxable limit, you may not receive a Form 16, and that is not an error.

Part A and Part B are produced differently

This distinction matters more than it sounds, because it determines who can fix an error.

Part A is generated by the TRACES portal, not by your employer’s payroll software. It carries the employer’s TAN, your PAN, the assessment year, and a quarter-by-quarter summary of tax deducted and deposited. Because TRACES generates it from the TDS returns actually filed, Part A is the part the department treats as authoritative. Your employer cannot simply retype a figure here. They have to file a correction statement.

Part B is an annexure your employer prepares. It shows the detail: gross salary, exempt allowances, the standard deduction, deductions claimed under Chapter VI-A, and the resulting tax computation. If a deduction you submitted proof for is missing, Part B is where you will notice, and payroll can usually reissue it quickly.

A useful rule of thumb: a mismatch in Part A is a TDS-return problem and takes weeks. A mismatch in Part B is a payroll problem and often takes days.

You cannot download your own Form 16. Here is why

This surprises people every June. TRACES is a portal for deductors, the entities that deduct tax. As an employee you are the deductee, and the deductee does not have download rights for Form 16.

Only your employer can log into TRACES with its TAN, request the certificate, and hand it to you. Any website offering to “download your Form 16” is either misdescribing what it does or asking you to hand over credentials you should not share.

What you can access yourself, through the income tax e-filing portal, is Form 26AS and your Annual Information Statement. Both show the TDS credited against your PAN. If you are filing and your employer has gone silent, these are the documents that let you proceed.

When you should have it: 15 June

Rule 31(3) requires employers to issue the salary TDS certificate by 15 June following the end of the financial year. For FY 2025-26, which ended on 31 March 2026, the deadline was 15 June 2026.

The date is not arbitrary. Employers must file the January-March quarter TDS return by 31 May, and Part A cannot be generated until that return is processed. The fifteen days in between are the processing window.

If your employer has not issued it

Late or non-issue attracts a penalty of ₹100 per day per certificate under Section 272A(2)(g), capped at the amount of tax that was deductible. In practice, escalating in this order works:

1. Ask payroll in writing, referencing the 15 June deadline under Rule 31(3). A written request creates a record and usually resolves it.
2. If there is no response, raise it with the finance head. The penalty falls on the organisation, not on an individual in payroll, and that framing tends to move things.
3. If the employer has shut down or simply will not respond, file your return anyway using Form 26AS and your AIS. You are not permitted to miss your own filing deadline because someone else missed theirs.

One caution on that third route: if the employer deducted tax but never deposited it, the credit will not appear in 26AS, and you cannot claim what is not there. Keep your payslips. They evidence the deduction, and you will need them if you have to take the matter up with the department.

Form 16 vs 16A vs 16B vs 16C

These are separate certificates for separate kinds of payment. The shared numbering is unhelpful, but the logic is straightforward once laid out.

Two consequences worth knowing:

A salaried person with a fixed deposit will typically receive both a Form 16 from the employer and a Form 16A from the bank, if TDS was deducted on the interest. Both belong in your return.

If you sell a property for more than ₹50 lakh, the buyer deducts 1% TDS, files Form 26QB, and issues you Form 16B. Sellers frequently wait for a certificate that will never arrive because they do not realise the obligation sits with the buyer.

Changed jobs during the year?

You will get one Form 16 from each employer, and they cannot simply be added together.

The problem is that each employer computes your tax as though it were your only source of salary. Each applies the basic exemption and the standard deduction in full. Add the two Part Bs and you will have claimed both twice, understated your liability, and set yourself up for a demand notice.

The correct approach is to total the gross salary from both employers, apply each exemption and deduction once, compute tax on the combined figure, and then subtract the total TDS shown across both certificates. It is common to owe a balance in this situation. That is normal, and paying it before filing avoids interest under Sections 234B and 234C.

You can avoid the whole problem next time by submitting Form 12B to your new employer when you join, which lets them account for your previous salary.

What to check before you file

Five minutes here saves a notice later:

• Your PAN, character by character. A wrong PAN in Part A means the TDS was credited to somebody else, and no amount of ITR editing fixes it. Only an employer correction statement does.
• Part A totals against Form 26AS. They must agree. If they do not, the TDS return has an error.
• Every deduction you submitted proof for. Missing 80C or 80D entries in Part B are common when proofs are submitted late in the year.
• The tax regime applied. If payroll computed your tax under a regime you did not intend, you can still choose the other one when filing, but only if you check before submitting.
• Exempt allowances. HRA, LTA and similar items should appear as exemptions, not silently absorbed into gross salary.

Common questions

Is Form 16 mandatory to file an ITR?
No. It is convenient, not compulsory. Form 26AS, your AIS and your payslips are enough to file a complete and correct return.

My employer deducted tax but gave me no Form 16. Is that legal?
No. Where tax has been deducted under Section 192, issuing the certificate is an obligation under Section 203, and failure attracts the ₹100-per-day penalty under Section 272A(2)(g).

Can I get Form 16 for an earlier year?
Yes. Ask your former employer. TRACES retains the data, so they can regenerate it. If the company no longer exists, use Form 26AS for that year instead.

What is “Form 16 ka matlab”?
It is your salary TDS certificate: written proof from your employer of how much tax was cut from your salary and deposited with the government.

Does Form 16 have a new name?
No. The certificate is still Form 16. Its layout is revised from time to time, recent versions carry more granular reporting of allowances and deductions, but the name has not changed.

The short version

The password is five PAN characters in capitals plus your date of birth as DDMMYYYY. Your employer must issue the certificate by 15 June, you cannot download it yourself, and if it never arrives you can still file using Form 26AS and your AIS. Check the PAN and the Part A totals before you file. Those are the two errors that cost real time to unwind.