What is Form 26AS and why does my refund depend on it?
It is the consolidated record, held against your Indian tax identifier, of tax that has been deducted, collected or paid for you. Its importance is procedural rather than conceptual: credit in an Indian return is matched against this record, so tax that does not appear in it is tax the system does not yet know you have borne. That reverses the usual instinct about evidence. A certificate in your hand proves that a deductor said it withheld; the record proves that the withholding was reported and deposited against your identifier. When the two disagree, the practical route to a refund runs through correcting the record, not through arguing about the certificate.
Tax was deducted from my rent but is not showing, what now?
Almost always the deduction was not reported against your identifier, either because the deductor has not filed its statement for the quarter or because it quoted the wrong number. Neither can be fixed from your side. Establish what the deductor reported and against which identifier, then ask it to file or correct the statement for the relevant quarter: corrections flow from the deductor's filing into the record, and nothing you file changes it. Keep your certificate and the correspondence meanwhile. If a return has to go in before the record catches up, decide deliberately whether to claim the credit and support it, rather than discovering the mismatch afterwards.
Why does my certificate show more tax than Form 26AS?
Because they come from different places. The certificate is prepared by the deductor and given to you; the record is built from the statements the deductor files. A difference means one of those two is wrong, and it is usually the statement: a quarter omitted, an amount keyed wrongly, or part of the year reported against a different identifier. Work out which quarter the difference falls in, because that narrows it immediately. The remedy is the deductor filing a corrected statement for that quarter. Until it does, the certificate is evidence of what the deductor says it did, which is a different thing from the credit the system will allow.
Can I claim credit for tax that is not in Form 26AS?
You can enter it, but expect the return to be processed against the record rather than against your documents, which normally produces a demand for the difference. That leaves you holding a correct position and an incorrect account. The better order of work is to get the deductor's statement corrected first and file afterwards, where the timetable allows. Where it does not, file, keep the evidence together, and treat the demand as a step that was foreseen rather than a surprise: a demand answered with a deductor's corrected statement is routine, whereas one answered only with a certificate tends to stay open.
Does Form 26AS show tax I paid myself as well?
Yes. Alongside deductions made by others it carries tax you have paid directly, including instalments and any balance paid on assessment, again matched to your identifier. That makes it the sensible last check before filing. Sums paid against the wrong assessment year or the wrong head of tax land somewhere other than where you expect, and the record is where that shows up while it is still easy to correct. Reconcile your own payment confirmations to the record before the return goes in, not after a demand arrives for tax you know perfectly well has already been paid.
Who gets the credit when tax is deducted on jointly owned property?
Whoever the deductor named. The record follows the identifier quoted in the deductor's statement, so a buyer or tenant who quoted one co-owner for the whole amount has put the whole credit with that person, regardless of how the property is held or how the income is shared. The consequence is a return that reports a share of the income and claims all of the tax, or the reverse for the other owner. The fix is at source: have the deductor report against each owner in the correct proportion for the relevant quarters. Agreeing that split with the deductor at the outset avoids the problem entirely.
How many days can I spend in a country before I become tax resident?
It depends on the country, and a day count is only ever the start. Many use a threshold in a tax year, some also look at averages across several years, and some have no day test at all and decide on where your home and life are. Two countries can both conclude you are resident, which is what the treaty tie-breaker exists to settle. Counting days without checking the tie-breaker is how people end up filing as resident nowhere. See the residency tie-breaker.
Is "fund transfer pricing" the same thing as transfer pricing?
No — and if you came here to calculate FTP, this is not it. Fund transfer pricing is a bank's internal allocation of funding costs and benefits between its own business units, a treasury and asset-liability management discipline used to measure branch or product profitability. Tax transfer pricing is about prices between legally separate related parties across borders, and about which country taxes the resulting profit. The words overlap; the fields do not. See our transfer pricing work.
