Income Tax: Here's how you can check if TDS was paid on your services

As per the income tax regulations, the due date of filing income tax returns is July 31, 2017 for individuals, and September 30, 2017 for businesses. 

For salaried class people, the ITR filing process becomes simpler as some companies do provide Form 16 and other necessary help. This is not the case for self-employed people.

A self-employed person needs to understand the tax treatment. From a tax perspective, self-employed individual's income is Profit & Gains of Business & Profession. 

They have to pay taxes on the combined income earned in a financial year from the different clients they have. All earnings, no matter how small, should be added to gross income for the year.

They should also be aware of Section 194J of the Income Tax Act that mandates deduction of tax deduct at source (TDS) from payments made to professionals. Which brings us to another part of the story.

This means that if a freelancer or a consultant is charging Rs 1 lakh for a project, 10% of it will kept by the client as TDS and deposited with the income tax department. 

A company that deducts TDS on payments for services is lawfully required to deposit this tax with the government and file TDS returns for it as well. 

How can a freelancer check that?

"A freelancer can verify this by checking Form 26AS. If TDS on a particular payment to you is deposited by the company, then it will reflect in your Form 26AS. If it doesn’t reflect, you can directly speak to the company or raise an official ‘Request for Resolution’ through the online TRACES platform," Archit Gupta, Founder & CEO ClearTax said. 

What is Form 26AS?

Your Tax Credit Statement / Form 26-AS is an important document for tax filing. Instead of manually downloading your Form-26AS for filing your I-T Returns, you can directly import your 26AS information while filing your Income Tax Returns.

The form can be downloaded from TRACES (TDS Reconciliation Analysis and Correction Enabling System) which is part of Income Tax Department. It is linked with your PAN. You can view the form from FY09 onward.

Here's how you can download Form 26AS