How to Merge Form 16 Part A and Part B into One PDF (Free, and Nothing Gets Uploaded)
Every salaried person in India hits this at tax time. Your employer sends Form 16, and it arrives as two separate PDF files: Part A and Part B. Your CA asks for "your Form 16" as one file. The bank's loan portal has a single upload slot. So now you're searching for how to staple two PDFs together without doing anything careless with a document that has your PAN, your salary, and your tax history printed on every page.
The merge itself takes about ten seconds. The part worth reading first is the why, and the one snag that catches almost everyone.
What Part A and Part B actually are
They are two halves of one certificate, produced by two different systems. That is the whole reason they arrive as separate files.
Part A is the TDS certificate: the record of tax your employer deducted from your salary and deposited against your PAN, quarter by quarter, with the employer's TAN and the deposit details. Employers generate it from the Income Tax Department's TRACES system, which is why it looks machine-formatted and usually arrives password-protected.
Part B is the annexure. It carries the salary breakup: gross salary, exemptions, the deductions you declared (80C, 80D, and the rest), and the taxable income the TDS was calculated on. Employers prepare this half themselves, so its formatting varies from company to company.
Same certificate, two systems, two PDFs. There is nothing wrong with your copy. Nearly everyone's arrives this way.
Do you even need to merge them?
Sometimes you don't, and it saves confusion to know when.
- E-filing your ITR: no. You never upload Form 16 to the income tax portal. You read figures from it while filling the return. The portal has no slot for the PDF.
- Sending it to your CA: usually yes. One file per financial year is what they want sitting in the folder.
- Loan and visa applications: almost always yes. Bank portals typically give you one upload slot per document, and "Form 16" there means both parts in one file.
- Your own records: yes. Future-you will be glad to find one file named
form16-fy2025-26.pdfinstead of two cryptic TRACES filenames.
The privacy part, before the how-to
Form 16 is about the most sensitive routine document you handle. PAN, full salary structure, employer details, tax paid: all of it on one page. Now consider that the first page of results for "merge PDF" is full of sites that upload your file to their server, merge it there, and hand back a download link. For a holiday itinerary, fine. For a tax certificate, that is an unnecessary copy of your PAN and salary sitting on someone else's server, governed by a privacy policy you didn't read.
The merge below happens entirely in your browser. The files never leave your device. That is not a settings toggle: there is simply no server on the other end to receive them. You can switch off your Wi-Fi after the page loads, and it still works. That is the honest test of any tool that calls itself private.
How to merge them (ten seconds)
- Open the free PDF merger.
- Drop in Part A first, then Part B. That is the conventional order (TDS certificate on top, annexure after), and it is what CAs and bank reviewers expect to see.
- Download the single merged PDF and rename it something future-proof:
form16-fy2025-26.pdf.
The snag: passwords. TRACES PDFs usually open only after a password. Commonly, it is your PAN in lowercase followed by your date of birth, and your employer's covering email states the exact format. An encrypted PDF cannot be merged directly; that is by design. The clean workaround: open each protected file with its password in your browser or PDF reader, use Print and choose Save as PDF to produce an unlocked copy, then merge those unlocked copies. You are not stripping any legal protection here. It is your own document, and the password exists only so that nobody else can open the copy that travelled through email.
If the portal you're uploading to enforces a file-size cap (bank portals often do), run the merged file through the exact-size PDF compressor and type in the limit from the form. It targets the number directly instead of making you guess with a quality slider.
Frequently asked questions
Is it valid to merge the two parts?
Merging changes nothing inside either document. Every page, signature, and figure stays exactly as issued; you are stapling, not editing. What would make a Form 16 invalid is altering its contents, and a merge does not do that.
My employer only gave me Part B. Where is Part A?
Ask HR or payroll. Part A comes from TRACES and only the employer can download it. If TDS was deducted from your salary, Part A exists.
I switched jobs this year. Can I merge Form 16s from both employers into one file?
You can, but label it clearly: you now hold two certificates for one financial year. Most CAs prefer one merged file per employer (that employer's Part A plus Part B together) rather than everything in a single PDF.
Does the order of Part A and Part B matter?
Functionally, no. Conventionally, Part A goes first. Whoever reads the file expects the TRACES certificate on top.
Every Docexp tool runs in your browser, and your files are never uploaded to any server. For a tax document, that matters more than for almost anything else you'll merge this year.