Many a time even if the tax is deducted and paid by the company it does not reflect as a credit against your PAN for various reasons like, you not submitting it to your employer in time, errors of reconciliation, etc. Its advisable that you inform your company finance officer that you have received such a letter.
Q1. The sure shot way of knowing that your company is depositing tax with government is to view your tax credit report. This was set-up in 2004 and gives the details of all credits against your PAN and the tax deducted against your PAN. It shows if the tax was TDS and which employer paid it, or if this was a self assessment, or TCS, etc.
To view this report there are 2 options:
Register directly at http://www.tin-nsdl.com/panregistration.asp. Follow the one time registration process and keep viewing the tax credits. Note it normally takes 2-3 months to reflect the data.
The other alternative is that quite a few leading banks [Citi, SBI, etc] provide a direct access to this report from their internet banking frontend, provided your PAN is associated to your account.
Q2. The only details you need to submit are the Form 16. This would have all the details of when the tax was paid and the BSR number required for reconciling.
Q3. TDS is the liability of the employer. However if this has not been deducted or too little was deducted based on incorrect/incomplete information give by you, then its your liability. For example if you change jobs in a year, the tax deducted is always less and you have to pay the difference.
Q4. If its established that the company was at fault for not deducting the tax or deducting and not paying it to government on time, there are enough provisions to penalize the company including putting the top management team behind bars.
