# Detect tampered and deepfake Form 16 > Form 16 is the TDS certificate an Indian employer issues after each financial year, stating the salary paid and the tax deducted at source, built in two parts: Part A generated through the TRACES portal and Part B prepared by the employer with the salary breakup and deductions. It underpins Indian loan, visa, and refund files, and the profitable fraud is simple: inflate the TDS figure so the refund claimed grows with it. **Canonical URL:** https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/form_16 **API document class:** `form_16` --- ## What a genuine form 16 contains Part A carries the employer's TAN, the employee's PAN, the assessment year, a unique certificate number, and a quarterly table of salary paid and tax deducted on the TRACES layout. Part B itemises the salary components, exempt allowances, and deductions, and lands on totals that must equal Part A's figures rather than merely resemble them. The assessment year always runs one ahead of the financial year, so income earned in FY 2024-25 prints on an AY 2025-26 certificate, and labels that contradict the relationship indicate a retyped form. TANs follow the same four-letter, five-digit, one-letter grammar as PANs, which gives structural validation a second anchor on the document. ## How form 16 forgeries are made ### Part A against Part B Total salary and total tax deducted must agree across both parts. A Part B whose TDS exceeds Part A's quarterly totals inflates a refund claim, and that reconciliation failure is the signature fraud on this document. ### Assessment-year arithmetic The assessment year is the financial year plus one on every field pair. Mismatched year labels, or quarterly figures that fail to sum to the annual row, point at retyped numbers. ### TAN and PAN structure Both identifiers follow fixed grammars, and a number that violates its grammar was typed rather than issued. A PAN that disagrees with the employee's other documents turns a formatting question into a composite-identity signal. ### Figure-level print forensics Edited amounts usually arrive as a changed font pass, realigned columns, or digit spacing that departs from the rest of a table row, because amounts are the only region a forger touches. ### TRACES layout conformance Part A follows the TRACES template down to the certificate number and the employer block. A Part A missing those anchors, or one that mixes formats, was assembled rather than generated. ## What TamperCheck checks on a form 16 TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks across three layers and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 with plain-English findings tied to specific regions of the document. These three carry the most weight on this document class. ### Arithmetic reconciliation Stated totals are recomputed from their components, and running or cumulative figures are checked for continuity across periods. A single edited value breaks the chain even when the page still looks right. ### Table structure integrity Inserted and deleted rows leave structural artifacts behind: inconsistent spacing, misaligned columns, and formatting the visible table no longer accounts for. ### Date and validity consistency Issue, expiry, and period dates are checked against one another and against the file's own creation metadata, which catches backdating and validity extension. ### And many more checks The three above are the layers that carry the most weight on a form 16. Every upload runs the full suite of 200+ checks regardless of document class, spanning file structure and metadata, pixel-level forensics, font and text rendering, optical and print characteristics, provenance signals, AI-generation signatures, and many more checks. ## Who verifies a form 16, and why Indian lenders, visa consultants, and tenant verification desks. In each case the document is being used to unlock money, access, or a legal status, which is exactly what makes it worth forging. ## How to verify a form 16 in 4 steps 1. **Collect the full form.** Get every page of Parts A and B as a PDF or flat scan at full resolution, since the reconciliation runs across tables on separate pages. 2. **Reconcile the totals.** Sum the quarterly salary and TDS rows in Part A and compare them against Part B's closing figures. Disagreement between the parts is the core fraud pattern. 3. **Check years and identifiers.** Confirm the assessment year is the financial year plus one, and validate the TAN and PAN structures against their grammars. 4. **Run a forensic check on the file.** Part-to-part reconciliation is arithmetic, but the edits that create the mismatch live in the print. TamperCheck runs 200+ forensic checks including totals recomputation and cell-level analysis, and returns a risk score from 0 to 100 with findings tied to specific regions of the image. ## Frequently asked questions ### What is the difference between Form 16 Part A and Part B? Part A is generated by the employer through the TRACES portal and carries the deduction record, while Part B is the employer's annexure itemising salary and deductions. The two must reconcile on totals, and a Part B alone, without a coherent Part A behind it, is not a complete certificate. ### Why does Form 16 show a different year than the salary year? Indian tax labels run one year ahead: income earned in FY 2024-25 prints on an AY 2025-26 certificate. The offset is the rule, so a certificate whose year labels match each other is mislabelled or fabricated. ### Can Form 16 exist if no tax was deducted? Employers must issue Part A where tax was deducted, and many issue the form or a salary certificate even below the threshold. A Form 16 claiming heavy deductions with no employer TAN structure behind it is the combination worth questioning. ### How does TamperCheck verify Form 16? TamperCheck reconciles Part A against Part B, recomputes the quarterly and annual totals, validates the TAN and PAN grammars, and inspects the tables for figure-level edits. It runs on a single REST endpoint, processes the upload ephemerally without storing it, and returns findings tied to specific regions. ## Related document types - TamperCheck Forensic Report: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/forensic_analysis_report - Unknown: https://tampercheck.ai/documents-support/unknown --- Try TamperCheck now: https://tampercheck.ai/dashboard · Docs: https://tampercheck.ai/docs · Pricing: https://tampercheck.ai/pricing