Tax deducted at source

Tax deducted at source is tax you have already paid. It comes off before the money reaches you, so the return has to claim it back — and to claim it, you have to know the figure.

The ledger cannot find it for you

This is the whole reason the record exists.

Almost none of this tax is a row in a bank statement. An export remittance under s.154A arrives already net of the deduction: the statement shows what landed, never what was taken. Rent under s.155 is deducted by the tenant. The tax on a domestic electricity bill under s.235A is a line inside the bill, and the statement shows one payment to the utility. Salary under s.149 is deducted before payroll pays out.

None of those is a transaction anyone could categorize, however carefully. A "taxes already paid" figure built from the ledger is always a fraction of the real one — and being a fraction, it reads as complete while quietly costing you the difference.

So the figures here come off the certificate, one per certificate.

Adjustable and final are added separately

These two are shown as separate totals on purpose, and there is deliberately no combined number.

Adjustable tax comes off this year's liability. If it exceeds what you owe, the excess is refundable.

Final tax has already discharged the tax on the income it came from. It is not claimable against anything else. Adding it to the adjustable total would inflate the credit you appear to be owed — which is a mistake a return will carry all the way to an assessment.

The section suggests which one applies, and the picker defaults to it. It is only a default: the same section is final for one filer and adjustable for another depending on the income it attaches to, and the certificate itself says which. That answer is stored rather than derived, so it cannot drift later.

A section that is not on the list

The list covers what most filers hold. It is a suggestion, not a limit — FBR renumbers sections by SRO, and a certificate under something we did not anticipate must still be recordable. Choose Other and type the section as written on the certificate; it is stored and totalled exactly as typed.

Record the figure before you have the scan

Attaching the certificate from your vault is optional and can be done later. The figure is what the return needs, and waiting for the scan is the most common way a certificate ends up never recorded at all.

Each line shows whether its certificate is attached, so the ones still missing evidence are visible at a glance when you assemble the export package.

What to keep

Keep every certificate you hold, including the small ones. Mobile and telephone deductions under s.236(1) are individually trivial and collectively are not, and a vehicle token under s.234 is claimable every year you pay it.