Form 26AS and AIS

What it means

Form 26AS is your annual tax credit statement on the income tax portal. It shows TDS and TCS deducted against your PAN, advance tax and self-assessment tax you paid, and refunds. Under the Income-tax Rules, 2026 it is renumbered Form 168. The Annual Information Statement (AIS) is a wider report: along with TDS, it shows interest, dividends, share and mutual fund transactions, property purchases, foreign remittances and other high-value transactions reported by banks, registrars and others.

How it works

Both are available after logging into the e-filing portal at incometax.gov.in.

• Form 26AS / Form 168: confirms how much tax has actually been credited to you. You can only claim TDS that appears here.

• AIS: shows the information the department has about your income. A summary version, the Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS), is used to pre-fill your return.

• Feedback: if any AIS entry is wrong or duplicated, you can submit feedback on the portal, for example “income not mine” or “duplicate”.

• Data is updated as deductors file their quarterly TDS returns, so check again closer to filing.

Example

Before filing his return, Vikram, a salaried employee, opens his statements.

Form 26AS shows: TDS on salary ₹1,10,000; TDS on FD interest ₹6,200.

AIS shows: salary ₹16,00,000; FD interest ₹62,000; savings bank interest ₹9,500; dividend ₹4,000; sale of mutual fund units ₹2,50,000.

Vikram’s Form 16 only covers salary. He had forgotten the savings interest, dividend and mutual fund sale. He adds:

Other income: ₹62,000 + ₹9,500 + ₹4,000 = ₹75,500

Capital gain on the mutual fund sale: sale value ₹2,50,000 minus cost ₹2,10,000 = ₹40,000

TDS to claim: ₹1,10,000 + ₹6,200 = ₹1,16,200

Because his return now matches AIS, he avoids a mismatch notice.

Key points to remember

• Check both statements before filing; most income tax notices come from income shown in AIS but missing in the return.

• If TDS is missing from Form 26AS, ask the deductor to correct its TDS return; you cannot claim credit that is not shown.

• AIS shows gross sale values for shares and mutual funds; you still need to work out the actual gain using your cost.

• Give feedback on wrong AIS entries before filing so the record is corrected.