To file a tax return after getting form16 from employer

Dear Tarun

Explaining all the applicable provisions may not be possible here. Will give you a brief idea. Being the first time, you may take the help of your CA or financial consultant or your knowledgable friends who might have already filed their returns in previous years. You can go throught the Income Tax Returns (ITR) and the instructions given in the site of income tax dept to get an overall idea as to what all information you need to gather before sitting down to fill and file your return.

Your total income is classified into different heads:

1. Salaries (you will get pretty much all the required details to be disclosed in the ITR from the Form 16 issued by your employer)

2. Income from House Property (if you own more than one house property, you can opt to show any one of them as Self Occupied, income from which will be considered as Nil. Rest of the properties will be deemed to be let out and the income will have to offered for taxation based on its annual value, computation of which is defined in the Income Tax Act. You can claim deduction of home loan interest upto a maximum of Rs.1,50,000 in case of self occupied property or without limit in case of let out property. Besides this, you can claim a standard deduction of Rs.30% from the annual value)

3. Income from Business or Profession (name says all. Hope it may not be applicable to you assuming you are not engaged in any business or profession)

4. Capital Gains (gains or profits than you make from tranfer or sale of any capital asset are taxable subject to certains exemptions)

5. Income from Other Sources (any income that you earn but doesn't fall under the above heads)

Total of 1,2,3,4,5 is your total income from which can claim certain specific deductions like LIC Premium, tuition fee of your children, principal portion of home loan repayment, donation etc. Every deduction is subject to certain limits.

TDS (from salary, FD interest etc.) can claimed against your tax payable, details of which can be taken from Form 26AS availbale online against your PAN.

Now to come to your points:

1. You have to offer the interest from FDs earned during the year under Income from Other Sources. 

2. Profits made from sale of Equity Shares sold after holding for more than 12 months is exempt from tax. Otherwise, it will be a Short Term Capital Gain (if any) that will be taxale at 15%. You can request a capital gains statment from your broker or through your online account which will fairly give you an idea regarding the gain or profit made.

Dividend that you would have earned while holding them is tax exempt.

3. Donation towards PM relief fund can be claimed as deduction from your total income under Sec.80G. Keep your receipt ready.

4. The donation you made through your employer can be added to your voluntary donation and even that can be claimed as deduction.

5. It will depend on the exact nature of Retirement scheme. But your employer would have consdiered its tax implication while deducting TDS and issuing the Form 16. So, you can rely on the Form 16 to see if any amount is eligible for deduction under Sec.80C or ask your employer or HR Dept as to the exact nature of the same.

Regards

Ajay

Dear Tarun,

As correctly explained by Ajay, Your employer is asking you investment declaration (somewhere around April or May) and accrding to that tax deduction is scheduled from your salary.

Usualy tax supportings are asked in Dec or Jan to verify that you have made investments as per declaration OR there is any additional investment or lesser investment to rescuedule your tax deduction.

So you should declare all your investment to employer (like FD, Donation Etc) even if you made investment after that you can do follows:

Download excel sheet after logging efiling site since you are doing it first time.

read all the forms first, do not hurry for filling the details.

now get your form 16 with you. Try to find out all the details in form 16.

after filling up details and verifying the return our tax payable should nil (zero).

At this time,

if your investments are not considered in form 16 (Under 80C) and you have paid the tax.

you have to change return type as "Refund"

mention details under 80C in suitable headings and check if refund amount reflect in last sheet.

verify the details once again.

Follow simple instructions for generating XML and upload it.

Same thing you can do online as well but since you doing this first time you may get long time to find details and session will be expire, so recommeded you Excel utility.

Try doing yourself, it's easy.

also attached small presentation as a guide for online filing. (circulated on forums with thanks to unknown owner)