Understanding Form 15G/H & Submitting Form Online
If your FDs in a particular bank are earning interests exceeding Rs 10000/- in a year, that bank will cut TDS(Tax deducted at source) @ 10% on the interest amount. Now if your total income is below 2 Lakhs (basic exemption limit currently), you are not liable to pay any taxes and hence you need to tell the bank not to cut TDS on FD interest. Form 15G/H is the way to tell this to your bank. If you submit form 15G/15H, then the bank will not deduct TDS and the entire interest income is given to you when the FD matures.
Form 15 G is for people less than 60 years of age while Form 15 H is for those who are 60 years or above. This form is valid for one financial year only. You need to submit the forms afresh in every financial year. Also, if you create a new fixed deposit, you will need to submit form 15 G/H again for that new fixed deposit.
How to submit Form 15G/H ?
Till recently, I had to fill out the form manually with all the details like FD numbers, FD opening date, maturity date and other personal details like address, phone number, etc. This I had to do on three copies of the form - one copy goes to the income-tax department, another remains with the bank and the third copy is returned to the customer with branch seal on it which acts as an acknowledgement copy. Just imagine how cumbersome it would be to fill out all these details in 3 forms one by one. It used to take me around 2 hours to submit the form in every bank and I used to wonder why they cannot provide the facility of submitting Form 15G/H online in this era of net-banking.
Luckily from last year, most banks have started giving the option to generate the auto-filled forms online. This facility is provided to all netbanking customers to ease the process of form submission. Although you still cannot submit the form online - you need to visit the nearest branch for submission, but at least now you dont have to manually fill all those details.
I have used this facility myself on three banks websites - HDFC Bank, Kotak Mahindra Bank and ICICI Bank, and it works like a charm! All you have to do is login to your netbanking account and click on the Form 15G/H option. You will get a list of all FDs that you have with the bank. Just select the FDs for which you want to submit the Form 15G/H and click "Submit". You will get the Form 15G auto-filled with all details. You just need to download it and take a print out (3 copies typically) and sign on the mentioned places. Submit these copies to your nearest bank branch. It will take you just about 5 mins for submission of Form 15G/H now.
This is a welcome move by banks as it saves a lot of time and effort of people like us.