New Delhi: The time has come for salaried individuals to submit details of investment declarations to their employers in order to avoid extra tax deduction from the salary of the following month. However, there is no reason to panic since the deadline to submit the details has been since the government has given a deadline till March 31, 2020, to make the necessary investments for tax saving under Chapter VIA of the Income Tax Act. This includes the most commonly used Section 80C options along with an option to claim a refund from the Income Tax department.

As per the recent announcement by the Ministry of Finance during the Interim Budget 2019 present on Feb 1, 2019, this year full tax rebate will be given on taxable income up to Rs 5 lakh. This means that there will be no Tax Deducted at Source (TDS) on the total income of Rs 6.5 lakh if a salaried individual is availing full benefit of Rs 1.5 lakh under section 80C.

As per the latest announcement by the then Finance Minister Piyush Goyal, if a salaried employee avails full tax benefits of health insurance, NPS, home loan interest and others, no tax would be deducted on a gross income of even Rs 10 lakh.

However, the recent changes in the Income Tax slabs make it little difficult for many to understand how to declare their investment in order to avoid extra deduction of tax from their income. It is advised to salaried employees to be very cautious while declaring their tax-saving investments to the employer. In case your annual income is Rs 10 lakh and after availing all tax-saving benefits, taxable income becomes Rs 5 lakh, an employee would be eligible to pay zero tax.

However, if you miss out on any investment declaration like interest on fixed deposits, education loan or any other such investment and your taxable income cross Rs 5 lakh, you would end up paying tax on all your income above Rs 2.5 lakh. Not only this, but you might also have to pay a penalty and interest for late payment of tax.

This is why it is very important for salaried individuals to declare all their tax-saving investments and expenditures, or it is suggested not to submit the investment declaration and claim tax refund while filing an income tax return.

It is also noteworthy that not submitting investment declaration documents or not disclosing income from any other source are not an issue, but one must have documentary proofs of all such investments and incomes so that in case a tax notice is issued due to any mismatch in Form 16 and ITR, you can submit the proofs for the same.