Actual Salary and Form 16 discrepancy

Without change in AIS for total salary, your ITR will be defective, if data altered. So, get it rectified first.

If your actual salary does not match Form 16, file based on actual income, not Form 16.

Form 16 is a TDS certificate, not a salary certificate. If your employer made an error (for example, a salary revision not reflected in the TDS computation, a bonus paid after the Form 16 cutoff, or a job change mid-year), the Form 16 figure will be wrong.

What to check:
- Download your AIS (Annual Information Statement) from incometax.gov.in. AIS typically shows income reported by your employer to the tax department, which may differ from Form 16.
- Cross-check with your salary slips and actual bank credits for the full year.
- If AIS also shows a lower figure, it likely reflects the employer reporting. You should still declare the correct actual salary in ITR.

If there is a genuine error in Form 16 (wrong amount), you can ask your employer to issue a revised Form 16. If they will not or cannot, file the correct figure in ITR with a note. The income tax portal will not reject the return just because it differs from Form 16 - any discrepancy gets flagged later by the system, not at filing.

For context on how TDS is deducted on salary and how mid-year job changes affect this, this [Section 192(2) TDS on salary guide](https://taxgarden.in/blog/section-192-2-tds-multiple-employer-job-change-india) covers how to reconcile TDS from multiple employers.