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

Form-16 is a significant document for salaried employees, as it contains all necessary information regarding salary earned by employees in a financial year, TDS deducted, perquisites received from the employer and income from any other source earned by the employee. It plays a vital role in filing Income Tax Return (ITR) under the Income Tax Act 1961. However,  opening Form 16 can be challenging because it is usually password-protected to keep employees' financial information confidential, and the password format for Form 16 varies from employer to employer, so there can be multiple possible formats.

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 Form 16 Password, and How Open It?

Passwords for Form-16 are the first five letters of PAN (in lower or uppercase) and the date of birth in DD/MM/YYY format. For example - password for PAN number ABCDE2050K  and DOB 27/03/1994 is ABCDE27031999/abcde27031999 However, it is essential to note that Form 16 passwords can vary from one organisation to another. Therefore, taxpayers should check their email for the correct password format to open their Form 16.

Form-16 Password Example

Form-16 password varies according to the employer's organisation. Several combinations of passwords can be used to open Form-16. Here, we have given some examples for Form-16 passwords. Let's say your PAN is ABCDE2050K and your DOB is 27 March 1994. Then, your password can be as follows:

• The password can be a combination of the PAN number (upper or lowercase) and the Date of Birth, for example, ABCDE2050K27031994/abcde2050k27031994.
• Password can be a combination of the First five letters of PAN(upper or lowercase) and the Date of Birth ABCDE27031994/abcde27031994

There are more possible password formats for Form 16. We have listed some of the examples below for your reference.

Why is The Form 16 PDF Password Protected?

Form-16 is a crucial document for any employee, as it contains significant financial data related to the employee, such as salary information, TDS deducted, PAN number, TAN number, address, number of benefits received from employers, investment details and more. Since this data is sensitive, employees prefer to keep it confidential. Therefore, Form-16 is password-protected and can be accessed by the employee.

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?