(I’d been meaning to write this post for quite some time but only got around to doing it now.)

During the process of filing my Income Tax Returns for the last financial year, I discovered that the TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) Certificate — commonly known as Form 16A — issued by my Bank had a wrong PAN (a “V” instead of a “U” in one of the characters of the PAN). Ouch! I immediately checked the original investment certificates and verified that the PAN was correctly mentioned over there. So this had to be a mistake on the Bank’s side.

Next, I logged in to the Tax Information Network portal and, as you can guess, the TDS credit wasn’t reflected there.

The very next day, I went to the Bank along with the erroneous Form 16A and the original investment certificates. Luckily for me, the Bank immediately accepted this as a mistake on their part (how this mistake happened in the first place in this age of core-banking technology is beyond my understanding), immediately corrected it, and issued a new Form 16A.

To be doubly sure, a couple of days later, I rechecked the Tax Information Network portal and the TDS credit was now correctly reflected there.

Thankfully, the whole process of correction was hassle-free. But there were important lessons learned:

• If you haven’t done so already, register yourself on the Tax Information Network.

• Check any TDS Certificate/Form 16A that you receive from a financial institution immediately for data accuracy (name, PAN, investment certificate numbers, etc.).

• Verify the TDS credits on the Tax Information Network. You can verify the TDS credits from your employment as well.

• Have any discrepancies corrected immediately and re-verify the corrections on the Tax Information Network.

Have you faced a similar situation before?