Form 16

Form 16 is a statement of the TDS or taxes that have been deducted from your employee’s salary and deposited with the government. Form 16 helps your employees calculate how much tax they’ve already paid, and what is due to be paid in excess.

From the Form 16 tab, you can generate and issue Form 16s for all your employees.

Prerequisites for Generating Form 16

• Update PAN for all employees. You cannot generate Form 16 for employees without PAN.
• Enter Tax Deductor details under Settings > Payroll Taxes. The Tax Deductor should be an employee in your organisation.

Issue Form 16

You can issue Form 16 to your employees by following these 4 steps:

• Upload Form 16 - Part A
• Generate consolidated Form 16 (Part A + Part B)
• Digitally sign Form 16
• Publish the signed Form 16

Upload Form 16 - Part A

• Go to the TRACES utility app and download the Form 16 - Part A for your employees. The files will have .txt extension.
• Use the TRACES PDF generation utility to convert the TXT files to PDF format.
• Compress the PDF files into a single ZIP File.
• Go to Filing and Compliance on the left sidebar.
• Click Form 16.
• Click Generate Form 16.
• Click and drag the ZIP file to upload Part A.
• Click Upload and Generate.

Form 16 - Part A will contain the following details:

• Employer’s TAN or Tax deduction and Collection Account Number
• Employer’s and Employee’s Permanent Account Number (PAN) details
• Addresses of employee and employer
• Assessment year
• Period of employment
• Summary of the amount of TDS deducted from your salary every quarter
• Summary of the TDS deposited with the government
• Certificate of monthly deductions

Generate Form 16

Once you have uploaded Part A, it will be merged with the system generated Part B file, producing a single Form 16 PDF document for each employee.

Part B consists of the following employee details:

• Salary break up
• Details of deductions claimed under Chapter VI-A of Income Tax Act
• Total taxable income
• Tax deducted from your income

Digitally Sign Form 16

The next step involves digitally signing the generated Form 16s. Form 16 must be signed by your organisation’s Tax Deductor.

Publish Form 16

The final step is to publish Form 16 to your employees. Here’s how:

• Go to Filing and Compliance on the left sidebar.
• Click Form 16.
• Click Publish next to a batch.
• Choose if you want to send notification emails to your employees in the pop-up.
• Click Confirm.

Your employees can view and download Form 16 as follows:

• Portal-enabled employees - Through the Form 16 tab in the employee portal
• Portal-disabled employees - Through email

Generate Form 16 (For Non-Taxable Employees)

Here how you can generate a consolidated Form 16 for non-taxable or nil TDS employees:

• In your device, create a blank PDF for each non-taxable employee. Enter the PAN numbers of the employees as the names of these blank PDFs.
• Compress the blank PDFs of these employees into a ZIP file.

Once you’ve compressed the ZIP file:

• Go to Filing and Compliance on the left sidebar.
• Click Form 16.
• Click Generate Form 16.
• Upload or drag and drop the ZIP file.
• Once you’ve uploaded your ZIP file, click Upload and Generate.

A Form 16 batch will be created.

• Click the number below the Employees count in the Form 16 batch.
• Click the Download icon to download the Form 16B.

The next step involves digitally signing the generated Form 16s. Each Form 16 must be signed by an authorised person.

Once you’ve signed you’ve signed the Form 16 - Part B:

• Go to Filing and Compliance on the left sidebar.
• Click Form 16.
• Add &upload_signed_file=true to the URL. Here’s a sample URL for your reference: https://spend.zoho.in/#/taxes-and-forms/form16?fiscal_year=2025&upload_signed_file=true
• In the Form 16 batch, click the More icon and select Upload Signed Form and upload the signed Form 16 - Part B.
• Click Publish next to a batch.
• Choose whether you want to send notification emails to your employees or not in the pop-up.
• Click Confirm.