Typically, you are asked for latest 2 months' salary payslip. This serves the following purposes:

1. Cost
- Companies always use your last drawn salary as a base when making an offer. Other factors considered will include industry benchmark (typically obtained from a few major consulting companies such as Towers Watson), internal equity (salary paid among existing employees), the job itself and the responsibilities that comes with it (e.g. if you are an Assistant Manager, and the company offers Manager position, obviously the additional accountability and responsibility will justify a higher premium).

- Based on the point above, the HR Dept need to ensure that you are telling the truth, and not inflating your last earned salary in order to give youself a big salary jump. I know it may seem unfair, but it's the truth, and I am sure if you own a company, you would do the same.

2. Verification
- Salary slip verifies that you actually work with the company until your last working date as you state in your employment application form.
- Why is this important? So we can spot if anything is wrong. A candidate may leave because he/she was asked to go, could be due to some negative things at work, and he/she could not find job for 3 months. To make things look good, he/she entered last working day as end August 2010, when he/she actually left in April 2010. When the candidate could not produce the payslip as what he/she wrote in the form, an alert HR person will be suspicious and would verify/check further. This is just an example so you get the idea....I know background checks can be done, but this is an area that can trigger the HR, informing us that soemthing is not right here....

My opinion is this: when HR asks for such document, you have no choice. Objecting means "you are being difficult", which is not to your advantage being branded as such even before you join the company, or even offered the job yet.

What can you do to preserve whatever advantage you have left in salary negotiations? Never ever indicate your expected salary. Focus on "wow-ing" the interviewers until they would fight to hire you. Let them quote you a figure, take some time to decide and come back with a higher one (make sure you have enough salary data, since companies have limited resources, i.e. if u insist on 50% increment when the company only offers 20%, there is no way they will meet your demands, unless you are an absolute expert and your skills/knowledge are not easy to source in the market).

Having said the above, salary is not the only consideration when deciding on an employment offer.....

Hope the above helps.