Financial Reporting Services

1. Step-by-step guide to file TDS Return of Salary (24Q) for free This article will illustrate each and every step for successful filing of Form 24Q. Before proceed let’s understand some basic concepts regarding form 24Q in the form of Questions and Answers. Question - 1: What is TDS Return Form 24Q? Answer: TDS return form 24Q is a quarterly statement required to be filed by all those employers who have deducted TDS (Tax deducted at source) from the salaries paid to their employees. In short, Form 24Q is Statement of tax deducted at source from salaries. It required to be submitted electronically thus it is also known as eTDS Return Form 24Q. Question – 2: What is the purpose of filing e-TDS Return Form 24Q? Answer: Every employer is under obligation to deduct TDS under section 192 from the salaries paid to its employees if their salary exceed maximum amount not chargeable to tax. TDS on salary is another form of depositing advance tax. Purpose of filing e-TDS Return Form 24Q is to intimate the PAN of employees and tax deducted from such employee so that the employee’s Form 24AS gets auto reflected. Question - 3: Is TDS Return Form 24Q mandatorily required to be filed by all employers? Answer: No, Only those employers who have obtained TAN (Tax deduction account number) and are paying salaries to their employees whose total income from salary exceeds maximum amount not chargeable to tax, need to deduct TDS from the salary payment and deposit the same before 7th day of the following month need to file TDS Return Form 24Q. Question - 4: What are the contents of Form 24Q? Answer: Tax deducted at source (TDS) statement of Form 24Q comprises of 2 annexures; Annexure-I contains details of challan and Annexure-II contains details of salaries paid and tax deducted mapping with challan details entered in annexure-I. Question – 5: What is the due date of deposit of e-TDS Statement Form 24Q for Financial Year (FY) – 2020-21? Answer: Due date for filing e-TDS statement Form 24Q pertaining to FY 2020-21 is as follows: Quarter Quarter – 1 Quarter – 2 Quarter – 3 Quarter – 4 Quarter Period 01st April 2020 to 30th June 2020 01st July 2020 to 30th September 2020 01st October 2020 to 31st December 2020 01st January 2021 to 31st March 2021 Due Date of filing TDS Return 31st March 2021 31st March 2021 31st January 2021 31st May 2021 Question – 6: What are the interests or penalties associated with e-TDS Return Form 24Q? Answer: The answer to this question is divided into three parts: Part-1: Interest applicable on TDS not deducted: Here the interest levied is 1% per month from the due date of deduction till actual date of deduction.

2. Part-2: Interest applicable on TDS deducted but not deposited: Every TDS deducted need to be deposited through TDS Challan on or before 7th day of the following month in which such TDS is deducted. In case of default in TDS deducted but not deposited, interest levied would be 1.5% per month from the due date of deposit till the actual date of deposit. Part-3: Penalty on late filing of e-TDS Statement Form 24Q: Here the penalty levied under section 234E of the Income Tax Act is Rs. 200 per day for the continuing default subject to maximum of TDS amount. Question – 7: What is TDS Certificate or what is Form 16? Answer: Every employer who has deducted TDS from the salary of their employees need to provide TDS certificate which is also known as Form-16 in accordance with Section 203 of The Income Tax Act 1961. This Form-16 enable the employee to file its Income tax return and claim the tax deducted from its salary. Form-16 comprises of two parts, Part-A comprises about Gross amount paid and TDS deducted on such amount, Part-B comprises about details of Gross amount paid. Now, here is the step-by-step illustration of filing of e-TDS return Form 24Q for free. You can file e- TDS quarterly statement on Income tax portal for free if you are having a valid digital signature. In case you are not having digital signature then you can file it at any TIN Facilitation centre by paying some nominal amount. Step-1: Go to www.tin-nsdl.com, an official website of Tax Information network, managed and maintained by Income tax department. Here you need to download RPU (RPU is Return Preparation utility, used to prepare and validate e-TDS Return). From the image below in pic-1: Page of www.tin- nsdl.com you can see link to “Download RPU version 3.5”. Proceed to download this file. Please note that Income tax department may renew the version; kindly proceed to download the latest version provided on this page. Step-2: After downloading RPU File (Return Preparation Utility), you will receive a .zip file in your download section. Copy this .zip file in a new and clean folder. Proceed to extract this .zip file.

3. After extracting you will get many files, look and search for file name “TDS_RPU_3.5”, it will be an executable jar file. On opening of this file, it will display a flash message as shown in pic-2. Note: If your system already has JAVA having version 1.6 onwards then simply click on OK to proceed. Else you need to download JAVA before proceeding. It can be downloaded from http://java.sun.com or http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/java/jdk Step-3: After clicking on OK in step-2, the RPU (Return Preparation Utility) will open, you need to select Form Number from the drop down menu. Here you can select 24Q for filing e-TDS statement for TDS applicable on employees, 26Q for filing e-TDS statement for TDS applicable on Professional / Contractors and 27Q for filing e-TDS statement on TDS applicable on foreign parties and others. In this case, since the complete illustration is regarding filing of e-TDS statement Form 24Q, select “Form 24Q” and click on proceed to continue. Step-4: In this step, the first tab is for filing of information for Form Number 24Q. Firstly you need to enter the quarter for which the form needs to be filed. Then it is categorized in three parts:

4. Part-1 require information on particulars of statement such as TAN (Tax deduction and collection account number), PAN (Permanent Account Number), Financial Year and type of deductor such as Individual, Company, Firm, HUF etc. Part-2 requires information on Particulars of Deductor (Employer), here you need to fill name, address, GST number (If available) and E-mail address of the employer. Part-3 require information on particulars of person responsible for deduction of tax, here you need to enter the name and designation of person responsible on behalf of employer to deduct tax. Here you also need to enter e-mail and mobile number of person responsible for deduction of tax.

5. Note: Here in part-3 it asks for information “Has regular statement for form 24Q filed for earlier period”. Here you need to enter the receipt number of earlier statement filed for Form 24Q. If you are filing Form 24Q for the first time then simply click on No to proceed. This is crucial information so you need to check it through traces login of your TAN to ensure the previous filing pertaining to statement 24Q. If you choose to click no and proceed without providing any receipt number of earlier statement then software will display an alert message, you can proceed after clicking “ok” on alert message. Step-5: In this step you need to enter challan details, you can visit this page after clicking on “Challan” tab from the left top corner. To make entries on this page, you need to click on add rows provided at the bottom of the application. Make sure you need to enter the number of rows depending upon the number of challan to be entered.

6. In the challan details you need to enter TDS, Surcharge, Education Cess, Interest, Fee and Penalty details as mentioned in the challan deposited from column 4 to 9 as seen in the image. Column number 11 will be auto populated. In column number 14 you need to enter BSR code as per challan available and date of challan in column 16. Column 22 requires information on head of challan. (Minor head of challan 200 refers to TDS payable by taxpayer and head 400 refers to TDS on regular assessment) Step-6: Here you need to move on next tab “Annexure-I Deductee Details”. You can move to tab from the top left side of tab list available. Here you need to click on “insert a row” available at the bottom side of the application. Make sure to enter the number of deductee records to be mapped with the respective challan entered in challan tab.

7. Step-7: Here certain information as provided in challan tab gets auto populated. You are not able to edit fields marked in dark colour; you can provide input only in the columns provided in white colour and are editable. Column 6 refers to section under which payment is made, it is as follows: Section 192A Code in the application 92A Particulars Salary paid to Government employees other than employees of union government. Salary paid to non government employees. Salary paid to employees of Union Government. 192B 192C 92B 92C

8. Here you need to enter PAN of the employee, Name of the employee, date of payment/credit and amount paid or credited and TDS amount from column 14 to 18. Here you also need to enter date of deduction of TDS in column 25. Now, all the entries are made and you are ready to “create file” to proceed further. But before proceeding further you need to download csi file. CSI file refers to Challan Status Inquiry file. This file needs to be downloaded from OLTAS application. Step-8: In order to download csi file, you need to move on to OLTAS (OLTAS is On-Line Tax Accounting System) application from https://tin.tin.nsdl.com

9. Here you need to enter your TAN number and date range from which TDS challan need to be mapped. You need to click on “view challan details”, afterwards you will get the details of various challan deposited, before proceed you need to verify the challan by providing the challan amount available with you.

10. After providing challan amount, you need to click on “confirm amount” to proceed further. Now, once you verify the challan amount and receive the confirmation of “Amount Matched” for the challan that need to be tagged in Form 24Q, now here you need to click on “Download Challan File”. You will receive, a dialog box confirming download of .csi file. Save this .csi file to proceed. Note: Do not change the name of the file downloaded.

11. Step-9: Now go back to RPU Utility and click on “create file” to proceed. Here you will receive a dialog box it require to provide “Challan input file name with path”, you need to provide path of csi file name and afterwards you need to provide path where you need to save the validated tds return form files in “Error/Upload & statistics report file path”. Click on “Validate” to proceed. In case of error, an error report is generated, you need to review the error and rectify TDS return statement. In case of valid file, a confirmation message appears specifying the path at which the validated files got saved. Successful message specifies that return is prepared and you need to upload it on income tax portal.

12. You will receive following files after successful validation of return preparation: 1.24QRQ3.fvu having file type as fvu 2.24QRQ3.fvu having file type as text document 3.24QRQ3 having file type as html document 4.24QRQ3 having file type as text document 5.27A_TAN NUMBER_24Q_Q3_2021 having file type as pdf Step-10: In order to upload TDS statement on income tax portal, you need to download “DSC management software” and validate your TDS statement. From the home page of www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in you need to download “DSC Managment Software”. You will receive a zip file having name DSC_utility, you need to extract this zip file and click on folder having name DSC_utility. On opening of such folder, you will get a file DSC_MGMT_UTILITY having file type as executable jar file. Click on DSC_MGMT_UTILITY file to proceed further.

13. DSC management utility will open. Here you need to upload .zip file, please note that .zip file should only contain .fvu file which was validated and generated earlier. Now you need to enter user id of TAN, and PAN of the person whose digital signature need to be affixed. Once you click on “Generate Signature File”, a pop up window appears requiring pin of the digital signature.

14. After validation, a signature file will be generated having extension “.signature”. Note: Make sure that the digital signature belongs to the person whose name was filled during preparation of TDS statement and this DSC also need to be register on e-filing portal before generation of signature file. Step-11: Now TDS statement file is validated, fvu file is generated, signature file is also generated, and finally you need to upload this on the Income tax portal. Login to www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in using the login of TAN in the capacity of “Tax deductors”. After login, You can able to view “Upload TDS” under TDS tab of tax deductor login.

15. Click on “Upload TDS” to proceed further. You need to fill information relating to TDS statement that need to be uploaded. After clicking on validate, you need to upload TDS statement file in .zip format along with signature file obtained in Step-10. After clicking on upload, you will receive “Upload TDS successful” message containing Transaction ID, and Token number along-with message of TDS upload successful delivered on e-mail.

16. You will receive e-mail on confirmation on upload of e-filing TDS Return You will also receive e-mail on confirmation on processing of TDS Return. On e-filing portal, you have option of “view filed TDS” under TDS tab drop-down menu.

17. You can view your TDS filed statement after clicking on “view details” Here you can able to see, all the details of your TDS statement filed, it contains token number, date of filing, and transaction number. On clicking “Token number”, you can able to get acknowledgement number and download option of provisional receipt.

18. There comes final receipt of successfully filing of TDS return statement. Disclaimer: This blog post is step-by-step complete illustration for filing of 24Q TDS Return statement online on Income tax portal using digital signature for free (No any fee is required to be paid). If you are not having digital signature then you can prepare TDS statement by following steps 1 to 9 and get this filed on any TIN facilitation centre. This is Do-it-yourself (DIY) illustration for users as we believe that knowledge should be freely accessible for human potential, freedom and enlightment. All the information provided herein are updated as on date of publish of this post, users can refer to illustration provided in this post at their own discretion. If any error or omission occurs in this post then it is considered as human error without any of our liability, we recommend to refer and adhere applicable law and provisions to all users.