Form 16 Password: What is Form 16 and How to Open Form 16 Password?

If you are a salaried individual, you may have heard of Form 16, which is a certificate issued by the employer to their employees, containing information regarding income, TDS, exemptions, and deductions. Form 16 is a password-protected file.

You might be interested to know what password to use and whether you can change or remove it. Let us dive into this article to get answers to the above questions.  

What is Form 16?

Form 16 is a password-protected file that contains all the information regarding your income, such as salary, tax deductions based on investment declaration made to the employer, and tax deducted (TDS) on it. It is required while filing an income tax return and has two components: Part A and Part B.

What is the Password for Form 16?

Form 16 password is usually the employee's PAN (in lower or uppercase), Date of birth in DDMMYYYY format, or a combination of both PAN number (whole or in part) with Date of birth. Form 16 password is configured by the employer. Hence, taxpayers should refer to the email sent by their employers to check the format of the password.

Form 16 Password Example

Generally, the password for Form 16 is a combination of your PAN number and date of birth in DDMMYYYY format. Let's say your PAN is ABCDE0000A and your date of birth is February 9, 1990, then, your password will be ABCDE0000A09021990. 

However, it is important to note that Form 16 passwords can vary from one organisation to the other. Therefore, taxpayers should check their email for the correct password format to open their Form 16.  

How to Remove the Form 16 Password?

Since Form 16 is password protected, you need to enter a password each time you open it, to avoid that, you can follow these steps-

• Right-click on the PDF file and open the file with Google Chrome.
• Enter the password in the above-specified format and click on the submit button.
• The screen printer option will appear in the upper right corner; click on it or press Ctrl + P. 
• Now, the print window will appear with an option to change the destination
• Change the destination to Save as PDF.
• Click on the Save button below and choose the desired location to save the PDF
• The password is now removed from Form 16.

However, please note that removing the password in the above steps might change the file format, and pdf might not be readable for other software.

Related Articles

1. Difference between Form 16 and Form 16A
2. How to File ITR without Form 16?
3. What is Form 16?