Issue of TDS certificate in Form 16A for taxes deducted at source from payments other than salary

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The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has issued Circular No.3/2011 dated 13 May 2011 dealing with the TDS certificate to be issued in Form 16A for taxes deducted at source from FY 2010-11 as per the provisions of the Income-tax Act, 1961 (the Act) other than Section 192. Vide the said circular, the CBDT has provided guidelines on the issue of the Form 16A and the manner of authentication of the same (i.e. digital or manual). We have briefly summarised the implications of the aforesaid circular in the table below:

For deduction of tax at source made on or after 1 April 2011

Type of deductor	Issue of TDS certificate in Form 16A downloaded from the TIN Website	Authentication of TDS certificate in Form 16A
Company (See Note 1)	Mandatory	Digital Signature OR Manual Signature
Other than above	Optional	Manual Signature mandatory (Option to sign digitally if the TDS certificate issued is downloaded from the TIN website)

For deduction of tax at source made during financial year 2010-11

Type of deductor	Issue of TDS certificate in Form 16A downloaded from the TIN Website	Authentication of TDS certificate in Form 16A
Company (See Note 1)	Optional	Manual Signature (See Note 2) mandatory (Option to sign digitally if the TDS certificate issued is downloaded from the TIN website)
Other than above	Optional	Manual Signature mandatory (Option to sign digitally if the TDS certificate issued is downloaded from the TIN website)

By making it mandatory for company deductors from FY 2011-12 to issue Form 1 6A by downloading it from the TIN website, an attempt has been made to minimise the errors in the eTDS statements filed by the deductors and eliminate the differences between TDS certificate and Form No 26AS (which contains TDS details of the deductee based on the eTDS statements filed by the deductors). This will ease the process of granting TDS credit correctly to the deductee.

Note 1 - Company including a banking company to which the Banking Regulation Act, 1949 applies and any bank or banking institution, referred to in section 51 of that Act or a cooperative society engaged in carrying the business of banking.

Note 2 – The circular specifies that in case the TDS certificate issued in Form 1 6A is downloaded from the TIN website, the deductor has an option to sign digitally. It further specifies that for ‘other deductors’, in case the TDS certificate issued is not downloaded from the TIN website, then the TDS certificate has to be authenticated by manually signature only. Though the circular does not specify the manner of authentication of TDS certificate for ‘company deductors’ who do not issue certificate in Form 16A downloaded from TIN website, inference can be drawn from the manner specified in the circular for ‘other deductors’ and accordingly in such cases of TDS certificate in Form 16A not downloaded from TIN website, the ‘company deductors’ may authenticate using manual signature.