Accessing 26AS or TRACES website from outside India

Update July 27, 2014

Looks like now NRIs can also access 26AS through different website.

TDSCPC services for NRIs is available through https://nriservices.tdscpc.gov.in/nriapp/login.xhtml . Kindly register and access TDSCPC NRI services through same.

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26AS (TDS form) can be accessed online if one is available for your PAN. It can be accessed

1. From the bank website after you login to your account

2. or income tax website (https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/) and then click on 26AS

3. or directly from https://www.tdscpc.gov.in/en/home.html

If you are doing that from India, you will not have any problem. But if you are overseas and trying to access you can do all of the above except logging into TRACES website. It throws up an error "
Site is not available due to technical reason.". It beats me why anyone would want to have that sort of security if I can call it that.

There are couple of ways to beat that. If your company has a VPN server in India, login to that. You should have no problem in accessing 26AS after that.

If that option is not available, there are few folks selling VPN service for India. If you are buying, make sure you are getting IP that belongs to India (Indian ISP). Reverse is more popular. I didn't have confidence in any of those sites. So decided not to buy.

Another easier and cheaper option is to use web proxy in India. Search for that. You will find quite a lot of proxy's. I picked 115.248.217.178:3128 from http://www.proxynova.com/proxy-server-list/country-in/ for demonstration.

Open 'Internet Explorer', click 'Tools' --> Internet Options --> Connections --> LAN Settings. Select Proxy server check box and enter IP address and port details.

Now you should be able to access TRACEs website.