What Is Form 26AS and Annual Information Statement (AIS)? How to Use Them Before Filing

Before the Annual Information Statement existed, the income tax department knew what tax had been deducted on your behalf, but comparatively little about the full picture of your financial activity. That changed with the rollout of AIS. Today, the department receives data from banks, brokers, mutual fund RTAs, registrars for property transactions, insurance companies, foreign exchange dealers, and many others, all aggregated against your PAN and displayed in a single statement that you can access on the income tax portal.

The shift matters for every taxpayer, but especially for investors. If you redeemed a mutual fund, sold shares, received dividends, earned FD interest, or remitted money overseas, that transaction is almost certainly in your AIS. If you file your return without reviewing it and your return shows figures that do not match what the AIS has recorded, the department's systems will flag the mismatch. In recent years, Section 143(1)(a) intimations and scrutiny notices related to AIS mismatches have become significantly more common.

This article explains what Form 26AS is, what AIS is, how TIS (Taxpayer Information Summary) fits in, how to access and read all three, and how to use them effectively before you file your ITR-2 for AY 2026-27. It also covers a significant transition: from Tax Year 2026-27 onwards, Form 26AS is being replaced by Form 168 under the new Income Tax Act, 2025, but for your current AY 2026-27 return the old documents still apply.

The Three Documents: Form 26AS, AIS, and TIS

Many taxpayers use Form 26AS and AIS interchangeably, or assume one is just a newer version of the other. They are related but serve distinct purposes. Understanding what each document is and what it is not prevents the most common pre-filing errors.

Document	What It Is	Primary Use
Form 26AS (Annual Tax Statement)	A tax credit statement that shows TDS deducted on your income, TCS collected from you, advance tax you have paid, and self-assessment tax paid. It is the official document used to claim tax credits in your ITR.	Claiming TDS and advance tax credits. Verifying that taxes deducted by your employer, bank, broker, and others have been properly deposited with the government.
AIS (Annual Information Statement)	A comprehensive financial information statement showing all transactions reported to the income tax department about you. Includes salary, interest, dividends, capital gains from securities and mutual funds, property transactions, foreign remittances, rent received, GST turnover (for business filers), and more.	Verifying completeness of your income declaration. Cross-checking that all income sources visible to the department are either reported in your return or explained through AIS feedback.
TIS (Taxpayer Information Summary)	A category-wise summary derived from AIS. It shows the reported value (as received from sources) and the processed value (after your feedback has been incorporated) for each income category.	Quick overview of totals by income head. Useful for a final cross-check before filing to ensure no category has been overlooked.

The relationship between the three is hierarchical. Form 26AS is the narrower, legally authoritative tax credit document. AIS is the broader transaction database. TIS is the summary layer sitting on top of AIS. For most investors, AIS is the document that requires the most attention before filing, because it reveals income that may not have been top of mind and that the department knows about regardless of whether you declare it.

Form 26AS tells you what taxes were paid on your behalf. AIS tells you what the department knows about your income. Filing without reviewing both is the single most reliable way to trigger a mismatch notice.

Form 26AS: What It Contains and How to Use It

Form 26AS, governed by Section 285BB of the Income Tax Act, 1961 read with Rule 114-I of the Income Tax Rules, is the official Annual Tax Statement that shows all taxes credited against your PAN for a financial year. Since AY 2023-24, its scope has been narrowed: most income data has moved to AIS, and Form 26AS now focuses primarily on tax credits.

The sections in Form 26AS that are relevant for AY 2026-27 are as follows:

• Part A: TDS on salary (from your employer's TDS return, Form 24Q). Shows the TDS deducted on your salary each quarter and whether it has been deposited with the government.

• Part A1: TDS on income other than salary (from payers filing Form 26Q). Includes TDS on bank FD interest, broker-deducted TDS on NRI gains, TDS on dividends, TDS on professional fees, TDS on rent, and other non-salary TDS.

• Part A2: TDS on sale of immovable property (from Form 26QB). Relevant if you sold property and the buyer deducted TDS under Section 194-IA.

• Part B: Tax Collected at Source (TCS). Relevant if you remitted funds overseas under LRS (TCS applies on LRS remittances above Rs 7 lakh) or purchased specified goods.

• Part C: Advance tax paid and self-assessment tax paid. Shows each payment you made using Challan 280.

• Part D: Refunds received from the income tax department for prior assessment years.

The most critical use of Form 26AS at filing time is verifying that the TDS credits shown match the TDS deducted as per your Form 16 (from your employer) and Form 16A (from banks, brokers, and other deductors). If TDS appears in Form 26AS, you can claim it as a credit in your ITR.

If TDS was deducted but does not appear in Form 26AS, it means the deductor has not deposited it or not reported it correctly. Claiming credit for TDS not in Form 26AS will be rejected by the portal; you must follow up with the deductor to ensure they file their corrected TDS return.

How to Download Form 26AS

Log in to incometax.gov.in with your PAN and password. Go to e-File, then Income Tax Returns, then View Form 26AS. The portal redirects to the TRACES website at tdscpc.gov.in. On TRACES, navigate to Tax Credit, then Form 26AS, and select the assessment year (AY 2026-27 for income earned in FY 2025-26). The statement can be downloaded as a PDF (password-protected with your date of birth in DDMMYYYY format) or as a text file. You can also access Form 26AS through the net banking portal of most major Indian banks under the tax section.

AIS: What It Contains and Why It Matters More for Investors

The Annual Information Statement, introduced by CBDT in November 2021 under Section 285BB of the Income Tax Act, 1961, is a comprehensive aggregation of financial information about you received from third-party reporters. The scope of AIS goes far beyond tax credits; it is a picture of your financial life as visible to the income tax department.

AIS is structured in two parts. Part A contains your basic profile: PAN, masked Aadhaar, name, date of birth, contact information, and address. Part B contains the financial information, which is what investors need to review carefully.

What Is in AIS Part B

Part B of AIS displays information received from various reporting entities under the Statement of Financial Transactions (SFT) mechanism, TDS and TCS data, tax payments, demand and refund information, and other specified information. The categories most relevant to investors are as follows.

AIS Part B Category	What It Shows	Where the Data Comes From
Salary	Total salary and TDS as reported by employer in TDS return (24Q)	Your employer's TDS filing
Interest from savings accounts	Annual interest credited, even if below the TDS threshold	Banks via SFT filing (Form 61A)
Interest from fixed deposits	FD interest credited or paid; TDS deducted	Banks via SFT and TDS return
Dividend income	Dividends paid by listed companies and mutual funds; TDS deducted	Companies and AMCs via TDS return (26Q) and SFT
Securities transactions (listed shares)	Purchase and sale of listed equity shares; computed capital gains	Stock exchanges, brokers, and depositories via SFT
Mutual fund transactions	Purchases, redemptions, and switches; computed capital gains	CAMS, KFintech, and fund houses via SFT
Rental income received	Rent payments you received as reported by tenants who deducted TDS	Tenants via TDS return (26Q)
Property transactions	Sale or purchase of immovable property; stamp duty value	Sub-registrars via SFT
Foreign remittances	Outward remittances you made under LRS; purpose and amount	Authorised dealer banks via SFT
GST turnover (for business filers)	Turnover declared in your GSTR-3B filings linked to your PAN	GSTN (GST Network)
Other SFT information	Cash deposits above Rs 10 lakh, credit card payments above Rs 1 lakh per month, and other high-value transactions	Banks and financial institutions via SFT

For most retail investors, the most important AIS sections to review are securities transactions (for equity capital gains), mutual fund transactions (for mutual fund capital gains), dividend income, and savings and FD interest. All of these feed directly into the income you must declare in your ITR.

How to Access AIS on the Portal

Log in to incometax.gov.in. On the dashboard, go to e-File, then Income Tax Returns, then View AIS. Alternatively, look for the AIS option directly in the quick links on the dashboard. The AIS portal opens within the same window.

Within AIS, you can view all transactions in Part B, submit feedback on any entry, download the statement in PDF, JSON, or CSV format, and view the TIS summary. The CSV or JSON download is useful if you want to work through a large number of transactions offline.

The AIS may show a large volume of transactions if you have an active investment portfolio. It is not unusual for AIS to have several hundred or even thousands of entries for an investor who made regular SIP purchases and redemptions, and received dividends from multiple companies.

Each SIP purchase, each redemption, and each switch is typically reported as a separate line item. The capital gains figures in AIS are computed by the reporting entity (the RTA or broker) and may differ from your own computation if the cost basis used is slightly different. This is why reconciliation against your own CAMS and KFintech statements is important.

TIS: The Summary Layer

The Taxpayer Information Summary is accessible within the AIS portal. It shows the reported value (the raw figures from reporting entities before any feedback) and the processed value (the figures after incorporating any feedback you have submitted) for each income category.

TIS categories map directly to the income heads in the ITR. Salary appears as a single aggregate, interest is categorised separately for savings and FD, dividends appear as one line, securities transactions show aggregate capital gains, and so on. The processed value in TIS is what the portal uses for pre-filling the relevant schedules in the ITR.

TIS is most useful as a final cross-check. After you have reviewed AIS transactions and submitted feedback on any incorrect entries, look at the processed values in TIS and compare them against the income you plan to declare. If TIS shows an interest income of Rs 45,000 and you are planning to declare Rs 38,000, that discrepancy needs an explanation: either some interest was earned after the TIS was last updated, or the TIS has an incorrect entry that you have already flagged, or you have missed some interest income.

TIS processed values are what the income tax department will compare against your filed return. If a category in TIS shows significantly more than what you declare, a mismatch intimation is likely. Review TIS last, after reconciling AIS.

The SFT Mechanism: How Information Gets Into Your AIS

The Statement of Financial Transactions, commonly called SFT and filed in Form 61A, is the pipeline through which financial institutions and other reporting entities send transaction data to the income tax department. Banks, brokers, stock exchanges, depositories, AMCs, RTAs, sub-registrars, and insurance companies are all SFT reporters.

The deadline for SFT reporting for FY 2025-26 is 31 May 2026. This means that by the time the ITR filing season is in full swing in June and July 2026, most SFT data for FY 2025-26 should already be in your AIS. However, not all reporters file by exactly 31 May, and some entries may be updated or corrected after that date. AIS is a dynamic document that is updated as new data is received and as feedback from taxpayers is processed.

For capital gains specifically: from FY 2025-26 onwards, CBDT has expanded SFT to include computed capital gains from listed securities and mutual fund unit transfers, reported half-yearly by brokers and RTAs. This means your AIS may already show computed LTCG and STCG from equity and mutual funds, not just the transaction values. This is used for pre-filling Schedule CG and Schedule 112A in the ITR.

SFT Reporter	What They Report	When Reported
Banks (scheduled commercial banks)	Savings account interest, FD interest, large cash deposits above Rs 10 lakh, credit card bill payments above Rs 1 lakh per month	Annually by 31 May for the preceding FY
Stock exchanges, depositories, and brokers	Purchases and sales of listed securities; capital gains computed from these transactions	Half-yearly; aggregated annually in AIS
AMCs, CAMS, and KFintech (mutual fund RTAs)	Mutual fund purchases, redemptions, switches; computed capital gains	Half-yearly; aggregated annually in AIS
Sub-registrars (property registration offices)	Property purchase and sale transactions including stamp duty values	Annually by 31 May
Authorised dealer banks (forex)	Outward LRS remittances including purpose code and amount	Annually by 31 May
Companies and AMCs paying dividends	Dividends paid to each PAN-linked investor; TDS deducted	Quarterly via TDS return (Form 26Q)

How to Use Form 26AS and AIS Before Filing: A Step-by-Step Approach

The effective pre-filing workflow is a structured reconciliation process, not a casual glance at the two documents. Here is the recommended sequence.

Step 1: Download Form 26AS. Check each TDS entry: does the TDS deducted on your salary match Part A of your Form 16? Does the TDS on bank FD interest match your interest certificates? Does TDS on broker-deducted items for NRI investors match? If any TDS appears in Form 26AS that you cannot account for, investigate before filing. If expected TDS is missing from Form 26AS, follow up with the deductor to ensure they file a corrected TDS return before you file your ITR.

Step 2: Open AIS and work through Part B systematically. Do not skim it. Go section by section: salary, interest from savings and FDs, dividend income, securities transactions, and mutual fund transactions. For each category, compare the AIS figures with your own records (bank statements, broker statements, CAMS and KFintech capital gains statements, dividend warrants).

Step 3: For entries that do not match your records, submit feedback within AIS. The feedback options available are: Information is correct, Information is partially incorrect, Information is denied (the transaction does not relate to you), Information is duplicate and already included, Information is not fully taxable, and Information relates to other PAN. Your feedback is noted, the source entity is notified, and the TIS processed value updates within approximately 24 hours.

Step 4: Review the TIS processed values after submitting feedback. The processed values should now reflect the corrected picture. Compare the TIS totals against your own computed income totals before opening the ITR form.

Step 5: When filling the ITR, use your own verified figures (from broker statements, CAMS, KFintech, bank interest certificates, and Form 16), not the raw AIS figures. The AIS pre-fill is a convenience and a starting point, but it may contain errors or stale data. Your verified records are authoritative. If your figures differ from AIS even after feedback, file with the correct figures and keep your documentation to respond to any future query.

Common AIS Discrepancies for Investors and How to Handle Them

Certain types of AIS discrepancies come up repeatedly for investors and are worth knowing about in advance.

• Mutual fund purchase transactions appearing as capital gains: AIS sometimes shows SIP purchase amounts as if they were sale proceeds, creating inflated apparent capital gains. This is a data reporting error. If you see a large capital gains figure that does not match your CAMS or KFintech statement, reconcile carefully. Mark incorrect entries as partially incorrect or denied in the AIS feedback mechanism.

• Double-counting of switches: A switch from one mutual fund to another is reported as a redemption of the source fund and a purchase of the destination fund. If both legs appear in AIS, the redemption proceeds and the purchase amount are both shown, but only the capital gain from the redemption is taxable. Verify against your RTA statement.

• Dividend income shown at gross before TDS: AIS shows dividend amounts before TDS deduction. When declaring dividend income in Schedule OS, enter the gross amount (as shown in AIS) and claim the TDS as a credit. Do not enter the net amount after TDS.

• FD interest shown in the year of credit vs year of maturity: Banks report FD interest in the year it is actually paid or credited, which may differ from when you expected it. If a multi-year FD matured and paid interest in FY 2025-26, it will appear in your AIS even if you had been accruing or deferring it mentally. Declare it in the year AIS shows it was paid.

• AIS showing higher capital gains than your broker or RTA statement: This can occur when the reporting entity used different cost-basis computation. The most common cause is that the grandfathering adjustment (FMV as on 31 January 2018) was not applied by the reporter, or was applied differently. Always rely on your broker or RTA statement for the final figures, and use the AIS feedback to note the discrepancy.

• Salary shown in AIS that does not match Form 16: If you changed jobs or had a mid-year salary revision that was not correctly reflected in Form 16, the two may differ. Use Part B of Form 16 from your final employer (which should include the consolidated salary figure) as the authoritative source.

Looking Ahead: Form 168 Replaces Form 26AS from AY 2027-28

A significant structural change is coming but does not affect your current return. The new Income Tax Act, 2025, which came into force on 1 April 2026, introduces Form 168 as the replacement for Form 26AS from Tax Year 2026-27 onwards (meaning from AY 2027-28 when you file returns in 2027).

Form 168 is designed to integrate what was previously in Form 26AS and AIS into a single consolidated document: both the tax credit information and the broader financial information. Under Rule 245 of the Income Tax Rules, 2026, Form 168 was notified by CBDT with effect from 1 April 2026.

For the AY 2026-27 return that you are filing now, Form 26AS under the old act and AIS as currently structured are the applicable documents. Do not attempt to use Form 168 for your current filing. The income tax portal will continue to provide Form 26AS for AY 2026-27 alongside AIS, as it has done for earlier assessment years.

The practical implication of the Form 168 transition is that from next year's filing season (for income earned in FY 2026-27), the reconciliation process may look somewhat different, with a single integrated document replacing the two-document approach you use today.

Pre-Filing Checklist: Using Form 26AS and AIS Together

The following checklist summarises the key verification steps before filing ITR-2 for AY 2026-27.

• Download Form 26AS for AY 2026-27 and verify every TDS entry against your Form 16, Form 16A, and other TDS certificates.

• Confirm that advance tax payments shown in Part C of Form 26AS match your Challan 280 receipts.

• Open AIS and review the salary section, interest sections (savings and FD), dividend section, securities transactions, and mutual fund transactions.

• Compare AIS capital gains figures against your broker's capital gains statement and your CAMS and KFintech statements.

• Submit AIS feedback on any incorrect, duplicate, or unrelated entries before finalising your income computation.

• Review TIS processed values after feedback to confirm the corrected picture matches your planned declarations.

• Where AIS figures differ from your own verified records even after feedback, file with your verified figures and retain documentation.

• Check the dividend section in AIS and compare it against your bank credits of dividend amounts. Ensure all dividends are declared in Schedule OS at the gross amount.

• Verify that the TDS from dividends in AIS matches the TDS credit shown in Form 26AS for dividend payments.

• For NRI investors: check that TDS deducted by your broker on equity sales appears correctly in Form 26AS so it can be claimed as a credit in the return.

Form 26AS and AIS are not optional pre-filing documents. They are the income tax department's picture of your financial year, and they will be compared against your ITR automatically. Form 26AS is the authoritative source for TDS credits you can claim in your return. AIS is the comprehensive transaction database that shows what the department knows about your income beyond TDS.

Disclaimer: This article is for educational purposes only and does not constitute tax or financial advice. Form 26AS, AIS, and TIS structures are based on the Income Tax Act, 1961 and CBDT notifications applicable for AY 2026-27. Form 168 under the Income Tax Act, 2025 applies from Tax Year 2026-27. Portal features and document structures are subject to change through CBDT notifications. Always verify current procedures on incometax.gov.in before filing. Consult a qualified chartered accountant for advice specific to your situation.