Introduction

E-Lock helps organizations in India, issue digitally signed, legally valid electronic Form 16s / TDS Certificates / Form 16A to their employees / vendors at just a mouse click. These digitally signed Form 16 / Form 16A can be distributed via email, eliminating the printing and distribution hassles. Allowing organizations to go completely paperless with the Form 16 / Form 16A process, E-Lock enables organizations to sign them digitally using digital certificates issued by any Certificate Authority (CA) in India. Signer’s digital certificates can be stored either on e-Tokens or can be installed in browser.

E-Lock PDFeSigner - PDF Form16/16A Signing & mailing desktop solution

E-Lock PDFeSigner is easy to use desktop software for digitally signing Form16 / Form 16A in PDF format. As an input it takes pre-generated PDF Form 16s / Form 16A digitally signs them, and keeps digitally signed Form 16 / Form 16A in an output folder. Using PDFeSigner you can automatically email all these electronic Form 16s to respective employees in bulk. PDFeSigner allows signers to associate their handwritten signature image or company logo with their digital signature in Form 16 / TDS Certificate / Form 16A.

PDFeSigner Features

• Insert visible digital signature in the PDF Form 16 / Form 16A at location specified by you
• Insert ‘Control Number’ in each PDF Form 16 (The Control Number is mandatory by law. Besides, a log of these Control Numbers is generated, which is also mandatory by law). This makes PDFeSigner fully compliant with Indian Law
• Configure signature placement in PDF Form 16 / Form 16A files as per requirement
• Preview your signature in PDF Form 16 / Form 16A files before you proceed with your sign
• Digitally sign the PDF files in native Adobe format, and signed files can be viewed and verified using Adobe Reader
• Associate handwritten signature image or company logo with the digital signature
• PKCS#7 compliant signature
• Digitally sign PDF files without installing Adobe Acrobat Professional on your machine

Indian Law on digitally signed Form 16

Indian Information Technology Act, 2000 provides the required legal sanctity to the digital signatures based on asymmetric crypto system. The digital signatures are now accepted at par with handwritten signatures and the electronic documents that have been digitally signed are treated at par with paper documents. The act provides the basic legal and administrative framework for e-Commerce, and prompts its growth by creating trust in electronic environment. Therefore, a digitally signed Form 16 has the same legal validity as a physically signed Form 16.

As per Circular No. 2/2007 dated 21/5/2007 from the Income Tax Department, Government of India has permitted employers / organizations to digitally sign Form 16 / TDS Certificates / Form 16A and issue soft copies of such certificates to its employees instead of printed ones.

Indian Law on digitally signed Form 16A

As per Central Bourd of Direct Taxes circular no. 03/2011 dated May 13, 2011, issuance of TDS Certificates in Form No. 16A and options to authenticate the same by way of digital signature are addressed.

TDS Certificates in Form No. 16A will be generated from Tax Information Network (TIN). It is mandatory for Companies and Banks to issue Form 16A from TIN to their deductees for deductions made from April 1, 2011 (F.Y. 2011-12 onwards).

As issuance of TDS certificate in Form No.16A by manual signature is very time consuming, specially for deductors who are required to issue a large number of TDS certificates.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes has allowed the option of using digital signature for authentication of TDS certificate in Form No.16A.

About E-Lock

E-Lock is a global brand of digital signature solutions, owned by Frontier Technologies Corporation (FTC), USA. FTC has its subsidiary in India under the name of Timeless Learning Technologies Pvt. Ltd. Apart from PDFeSigner, E-Lock offers various other desktop based and web based digital signature solutions which are used in e-tendering, e-banking, e-approvals and other online processes. For more information, visit www.elock.com