The Annual Information Statement (AIS) is the income-tax department's comprehensive record of the financial information reported about you — salary, interest, dividends, share and mutual-fund transactions, property deals, TDS and more. It is not your tax bill; it is a data mirror you should reconcile with your own records before filing, because a mismatch is the most common trigger for a notice.
Think of the AIS as everything the tax department already knows about your money for the year, gathered from banks, employers, brokers, mutual funds, registrars and other reporters, all in one place. Its purpose is transparency: you can see exactly what has been reported against your PAN, so you can file a complete and accurate return and avoid the awkward gap between what you declared and what the department was told. It does not calculate your tax and it is not always perfectly correct — which is precisely why you should read it, reconcile it, and correct it where needed rather than blindly trusting or ignoring it.
The AIS is far wider than the old tax-credit statement. It pulls together your salary, interest from savings accounts and fixed deposits, dividends, the purchase and sale of shares and mutual-fund units, property transactions, rent received, foreign remittances made under the LRS, GST turnover where applicable, cash deposits and withdrawals above the reporting thresholds, and all your TDS and TCS, advance tax and refunds. Each line typically carries two figures — the reported value (what the source reported) and the modified value (what stands after any feedback you submit) — so you can see both the raw data and your corrections.
People often confuse the three, but they serve different roles. Form 26AS is the narrower, older statement that focuses on tax credits — the TDS and TCS deducted against your PAN, plus advance tax and refunds. The AIS is the broad, newer statement that includes 26AS-type credits and, on top of that, all the income and high-value transactions reported about you. The Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) is a simplified, category-wise summary derived from the AIS — it aggregates each type of income into a single figure and is what the portal uses to pre-fill your ITR. In practice you use 26AS to confirm your tax credits, the AIS to reconcile your income, and the TIS as the quick summary that feeds the pre-filled return.
You'll find the AIS on the income-tax e-filing portal under Services → Annual Information Statement (AIS), where you can view and download both the AIS and the TIS. The right way to use it is straightforward: download it before you file, then reconcile every material entry against your own records — salary slips, bank and broker statements, capital-gains statements and property papers. Where the AIS matches, you have comfort that your return is complete; where it doesn't, you investigate before filing rather than after a notice arrives. The pre-filled ITR draws from the TIS, but you remain responsible for the final figures, so never assume the pre-fill is automatically right.
A powerful feature of the AIS is that you can respond to any entry you think is inaccurate. Against each item you can mark feedback such as information is correct, information is not fully correct, the income relates to another person or year, duplicate or included elsewhere, or denied. Once you submit feedback, the modified value updates and your position is recorded. This matters when, for example, a transaction that isn't yours appears, an amount is overstated, or the same income is double-counted. Submitting clear feedback both corrects your record and creates a documented explanation should the department ever query the difference between your return and the AIS.
One point trips up many first-time users: for investments and property, the AIS reports the gross sale or purchase value, not your taxable gain. A ₹5 lakh mutual-fund redemption appears as ₹5 lakh even if your actual capital gain was only ₹20,000. You are taxed on the gain, computed from your own cost records — not on the headline AIS figure. So reconcile against the AIS, but always report the correctly-computed income from your broker or AMC statement, as explained in reporting a mutual-fund or share sale.
The department increasingly relies on AIS data to flag under-reporting, and its systems automatically compare your filed return with the AIS. A genuine mismatch — income in the AIS that you didn't declare, or TDS you claimed that isn't there — is among the most common reasons an intimation or a notice is issued. By reconciling the AIS before you file, correcting any wrong entries through feedback, and reporting your income accurately, you close the gap that triggers scrutiny in the first place. It turns the AIS from a source of anxiety into your best checklist for a clean return.
Every entry in your AIS is fed by a reporting entity that is legally required to report certain transactions to the tax department. Your bank reports interest paid and large cash deposits; your employer reports salary and the TDS deducted; your broker and the mutual-fund registrars report the securities and units you bought and sold; the sub-registrar reports property transactions; and authorised dealers report your foreign remittances. Because the data flows from so many independent sources, occasional errors, duplicates and timing mismatches are normal — a March transaction may appear in a different year, or the same income may be reported by two entities. This is exactly why the department built in the feedback mechanism, and why you should treat the AIS as a starting point to verify rather than a final word.
The issues people most often see are duplicates, where the same interest or sale appears twice; amounts that look inflated because they show the gross value rather than your net gain; entries that genuinely belong to a joint holder or a family member whose transaction was linked to your PAN; and transactions from a different year caught by a reporting lag. In each case the fix is the same disciplined approach: verify the entry against your own bank, broker or property records, report the correct figure in your return, and submit AIS feedback marking the entry as duplicate, not fully correct, or relating to another person or year. Keeping a short reconciliation note alongside your filing papers means that if a query ever arises, you can explain every difference between your return and the AIS in a sentence.
Form 26AS mainly shows your tax credits — TDS, TCS, advance tax and refunds. The AIS is far broader: it includes those credits plus all the income and high-value transactions reported about you, such as interest, dividends, securities and property deals. Use 26AS for credits and the AIS to reconcile your income.
The Taxpayer Information Summary is a simplified, category-wise summary derived from the AIS. It aggregates each type of income into a single figure and is used to pre-fill your ITR, while the AIS carries the detailed underlying entries.
Submit feedback against that entry — marking it as not fully correct, duplicate, relating to another person or year, or denied. The modified value updates and your explanation is recorded, which protects you if the department later compares your return with the AIS.
No — for investments and property the AIS shows the gross sale or purchase value, not your taxable gain. Compute the gain from your own cost records and report that, using the AIS only to reconcile.
We reconcile your AIS/TIS, submit feedback on wrong entries, and file a clean, notice-proof return.
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