Annual Information Statement (AIS)

The Annual Information Statement is the income-tax department's complete view of every reportable financial transaction the taxpayer has carried out during the financial year, presented through the same Form 26AS portal that previously showed only the Tax Deducted at So…

Twenty-eight of the fifty-nine categories that the Annual Information Statement tracks are pure income receipts -- the salary credited by the employer, the rent received from the tenant, the dividend declared by the company, the interest credited by the bank, the lotter…

Capital markets and property transactions are the most heavily reported categories in the Annual Information Statement, and also the most frequent source of mismatch notices. Every sale of land, every transfer of shares from a demat account, every redemption of mutual f…

For the business taxpayer, the Annual Information Statement is now the most comprehensive cross-check of the books of account that the income-tax department has ever published. Business receipts deducted under section 194Q, Goods and Services Tax turnover and purchases …

Three of the most heavily expanded categories in the Annual Information Statement track cross-border money movement -- the rupee remitted out of India under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme of the Reserve Bank of India, the rupee equivalent received in India from abroa…

This concluding article in the Annual Information Statement series brings together the new categories that the Central Board of Direct Taxes added between 2024 and 2026, the risk-management architecture that decides which feedback gets escalated, the notice-defence play…

It is now common for the Annual Information Statement to display an entry that the taxpayer either does not recognise, only partly recognises, or sees twice. The reasons range from honest mis-tagging by the reporting source (a bank reporting a savings interest credit ag…

Twenty years ago an income-tax return was a piece of paper into which the assessee wrote whatever income he or she chose to declare. The Income Tax Officer trusted the figures unless an enquiry threw up evidence to the contrary, and that evidence was hard to come by. To…

Form 26AS -- the Annual Tax Statement -- has been the gold standard for verifying tax-deducted-at-source / tax-collected-at-source / advance tax credit since 2009. From Finance Act, 2020 onwards, the framework expanded to the Annual Information Statement and the Taxpaye…