Form 26AS, AIS and TIS: what each shows and which to trust

Three statements, one purpose

Before you file a return, the Income Tax Department already knows a lot about your year. Banks report your interest. Employers report your salary and tax deducted. Brokers and fund houses report your sales. That information is shown to you in three places on the e-filing portal at incometax.gov.in: Form 26AS, the Annual Information Statement (AIS) and the Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS).

Filing without looking at them is the most common route to a mismatch notice. Our guide to first-time filing puts this check at step one, and it is worth understanding what each document is for.

What each one shows

The practical point: 26AS tells you what tax you can claim credit for; AIS tells you what the department thinks you earned. Both should reconcile with your own records.

How to read them

Start with 26AS. Add up the tax deducted by each employer and compare it with Form 16. If your Form 16 says ₹60,000 was deducted but 26AS credits only ₹48,000, the employer has not deposited or reported the difference, and you should ask them to file a correction. Tax is credited to you only if it appears in your statement, so a mismatch here directly costs you money.

Then open AIS. Look at each section:

• Salary and TDS should match Form 16.
• Interest from savings accounts and deposits. Banks report this, and people often forget a dormant account or a second bank.
• Dividends from shares and funds, which are taxable at your slab rate. See our post on dividend income tax.
• Securities and mutual fund transactions, which show sale values reported by brokers and fund houses. These do not show your profit; you still need your capital gains statement. Our capital gains calculator helps estimate it.

An illustration: you remember earning ₹18,000 of savings interest, but AIS shows ₹18,000 from one bank and ₹9,400 from another account you opened years ago. The total of ₹27,400 is what you should report. The reverse also happens: a bank reports ₹40,000 of interest where your passbook shows ₹4,000, usually a typing error.

When something is wrong

Both cases have a clear route.

1. A reporting error. Use the feedback option on the AIS entry. You can mark information as correct, or as wholly or partly incorrect, and state the right value. Also contact the bank or broker, who can fix it at source.
2. Credit missing in 26AS. Ask the deductor (employer, bank) to file a corrected TDS statement. You cannot fix this yourself. The TDS reconciliation side of things is run through TRACES, which deductors use and which lets you view credits.
3. Information that is right but you disagree with how it is classified. Report the income correctly in the return, in the right head, and keep documents to explain it.

Feedback does not replace filing correctly. If AIS is wrong and you do not respond, you may later have to explain the gap.

A pre-filing routine

Once a year, before you file:

1. Download 26AS and AIS for the year, and the TIS.
2. Tick off each employer's TDS against Form 16.
3. List every bank account that reported interest and every demat or fund account that reported transactions.
4. Compare your own tax computation with the processed values in TIS.
5. Give feedback on anything incorrect, then file.

If you have TDS on fixed deposits, check that it appears; our explainer on TDS on FD interest and Form 15G/15H explains why some banks deduct and some do not. If you hold funds across platforms, a consolidated account statement helps you cross-check what AIS reports. For a broader sense of what each deduction means, read advance tax and TDS.

Why it matters more now

Reporting by banks, brokers and fund houses has become more complete each year, so the department's picture of you is usually detailed. Declaring less than it shows triggers an automated mismatch. Declaring what it shows, with clear explanations where you disagree, is the simplest way to avoid a notice. The portal's income tax returns help pages describe the filing flow in full.

Mistakes worth avoiding

Treating AIS as proof of tax owed. AIS lists what others reported, not what is taxable. A mutual fund sale appears with its sale value; the taxable amount is only the gain, which you work out. Reporting the sale value as income would overstate your tax.

Ignoring small items. A ₹300 interest credit or a small dividend feels trivial, yet automated matching works line by line. Reporting small items costs a minute; explaining them later costs more.

Relying on a stale download. Banks and brokers upload data through the year and correct it after. Download a fresh copy just before you file, and again if you revise. The statements for a financial year are usually fullest after the reporting deadlines for deductors have passed, so an early download in April may be incomplete.

Forgetting the other direction. If your own records show tax paid (say, advance tax or self-assessment tax) that is missing from 26AS, check the challan details. A wrong PAN or assessment year on a challan is a common reason credits do not show.

This article is for education only and is not tax advice. Portal features and tax rules change; verify current details on the Income Tax Department's website or with a qualified professional.