Reconciling AIS, TIS and Form 26AS

Before a return is filed, the department already holds a picture of the year. It shows salary and the tax deducted from it, bank interest, dividends, share sales, property purchases, foreign remittances and GST turnover. The picture is built from what other people report, and other people make mistakes. An interest entry may appear twice. A property purchased jointly may be shown in full against one co-owner. A deductor may quote the wrong PAN. A return that ignores these entries tends to draw a processing adjustment or a notice. A return that copies them uncritically can overstate income. Reconciliation sits between the two: check each entry, accept what is right, and give feedback on what is not.

Which Act governs which year

The statements themselves rest on materially identical provisions in the two Acts. Section 285BB of the Income-tax Act, 1961 and section 510 of the Income-tax Act, 2025 each require the prescribed authority to “upload in the registered account of the assessee an annual information statement” containing information in the department’s possession.

• Financial year 2025-26 (assessment year 2026-27) and earlier: the return the statement feeds is filed under the 1961 Act. Credit for tax deducted is given under section 199, and the bar on demanding deducted tax from the deductee is in section 205.
• Tax year 2026-27 onwards: the 2025 Act applies. Section 390(5) treats tax deducted or collected and paid to the Central Government as paid on behalf of the deductee or collectee, and section 401 repeats the section 205 bar in the same words. Rule 245 of the Income-tax Rules, 2026 prescribes the statement as Form No. 168. It lists its contents: TDS and TCS, specified financial transactions, payment of taxes, demand and refund, pending and completed proceedings, and other information the Board authorises. It must be uploaded within ninety days from the end of the month in which the information is received.

Three statements, three jobs

Form 26AS (Annual Tax Statement) is on TRACES. The portal’s AIS FAQ says it “displays only TDS/TCS related data of the taxpayer”. It is the record of tax deducted and collected against the PAN, built from the deductors’ quarterly statements, and it is the record the Centralised Processing Centre (CPC) matches TDS claims against.

The Annual Information Statement (AIS) is on the compliance portal, reached from the e-filing dashboard. Part A holds the taxpayer’s general details. Part B holds TDS/TCS information, information from statements of financial transactions (SFT), payment of taxes, demand and refund, and “other information” such as Annexure II salary data, interest on refunds and foreign remittances. GST turnover appears under the code EXC-GSTR3B. For each entry the AIS shows the value as reported and, once feedback is given, the modified value.

The Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) aggregates the AIS by category: salary, interest, dividend and so on. For each it shows the “value processed by system” (after de-duplication by pre-defined rules) and the “value accepted by taxpayer/confirmed by source”. The portal FAQ says the accepted or confirmed values “will be used for pre-filling of return, if applicable”.

The AIS is not exhaustive. The FAQ is explicit: “There may be other transactions relating to the taxpayer which are not presently displayed”, and the taxpayer “is expected to check all related information and report complete and accurate information”.

What to have ready

• AIS and TIS for the financial year, downloaded as PDF, JSON or CSV from the AIS service on the portal.
• Form 26AS, from TRACES through the portal’s link.
• The taxpayer’s own records: Form 16 and Form 16A (from the employer and other deductors), bank and fixed-deposit interest certificates, dividend statements, broker capital-gains statements, sale and purchase deeds, rent receipts and GST returns.
• Challan receipts for advance tax and self-assessment tax, from e-Pay Tax’s Payment History. The AIS “Payment of Taxes” section should show the same challans.
• The previous year’s return, to spot entries belonging to the wrong year.

The reconciliation, line by line

The work is a three-way match: books against AIS, and AIS against Form 26AS.

1. TDS and TCS. Match each deductor’s TAN, amount paid or credited, and tax deducted, from Form 16 or 16A to Form 26AS. A tax claim not in Form 26AS will usually be refused at processing. In the Delhi High Court case discussed below, the department described the usual causes of mismatch: the deductor’s TAN wrongly quoted in the return; salary TDS reported in the non-salary schedule or the reverse; TDS from several deductors aggregated under one TAN; challan details (BSR code, serial number, date, amount) in the return not matching Form 26AS; and errors in PAN or assessment year on the deductor’s or the taxpayer’s challan.
2. Income with no TDS. Savings interest, dividends below the TDS threshold and SFT-reported sales appear in the AIS only. Compare each with the bank, depository or broker record.
3. Timing. A receipt the deductor reported in one year may belong, on the taxpayer’s method of accounting, to another. The AIS reflects the reporter’s year.
4. Gross and net. Share sales appear at sale value. The return reports the capital gain after cost. The AIS figure is the starting point for the computation, not the income.
5. Payment of taxes. Every advance tax and self-assessment tax challan should appear, against the right assessment year and minor head. A challan against the wrong year or head can be corrected online, within limits. See Advance Tax and Self-Assessment Tax.

Feedback: the options and what they do

Feedback is given entry by entry. The portal FAQ sets out the steps. The taxpayer opens the information, clicks the “Optional” button in the Feedback column to reach the “Add Feedback” screen, chooses the option and enters its details, and submits. The options shown on that screen (as reproduced in NSDL’s AIS FAQ) are:

• Information is correct. The entry is accepted as it stands.
• Information is not fully correct. The entry belongs to the taxpayer but some attribute, such as the amount, is wrong. The corrected value is entered. This option cannot be given in bulk.
• Information relates to other PAN/Year. The taxpayer recognises the transaction but it belongs to another person (a joint owner, for example) or another year.
• Information is duplicate/included in other information. The same transaction is reported twice, or is already covered by another entry.
• Information is denied. The transaction does not pertain to the taxpayer at all.
• Customised options, which vary with the category of information.

What feedback changes

On submission, the portal FAQ says, “the feedback will be displayed with the information and the modified value of the information will also be visible with the reported value”. An acknowledgement receipt can be downloaded, and confirmation is sent by e-mail and SMS. Feedback can be modified without limit. All feedback other than “Information is correct” can be seen together in the AIS Consolidated Feedback file.

Feedback is also sent back to the reporter. A CBDT press release of 13 May 2024 states that “in case of wrong reporting, the same is taken up with the Source for their confirmation, in an automated manner”. That process then worked for information from tax deductors and collectors and from SFT reporting entities. The AIS now shows four further fields for each entry: whether the feedback was shared for confirmation, the date it was shared, the date the source responded, and the source’s response. Where the source accepts the feedback in full or in part, the release says, “the information is required to be corrected by filing a correction statement by the Source”.

What feedback does not change

Feedback is the taxpayer’s statement of position. It does not correct the deductor’s TDS statement, and it does not add a missing credit to Form 26AS. Three consequences follow.

1. TDS credit still depends on the deductor. A credit that is missing because the deductor quoted a wrong PAN or did not file its statement appears only after the deductor files a correction statement on TRACES. Feedback in the AIS starts that process. It does not complete it.
2. The return should match the position the taxpayer is taking. A receipt denied in the AIS but included in the return, or the reverse, leaves an inconsistency the CPC or the Assessing Officer may act on.
3. A difference that remains after feedback is still a difference. It may surface as a proposed adjustment under section 143(1), a compliance e-campaign, or information supporting a reassessment. The feedback history, with its dates and the source’s response, is evidence of the taxpayer’s position when that happens.

When the deductor has deducted but the credit is missing

Two decisions frame the position of a deductee whose tax was deducted but who does not see the credit.

In Court on its own motion v. CIT (Delhi High Court, 14 March 2013), a public interest petition began from a chartered accountant’s letter about demands raised at processing because TDS shown in returns did not match Form 26AS, and about refunds adjusted against old demands. The department’s own affidavit put defective TDS statements at 43 per cent (2010-11) and 39 per cent (2011-12) of those processed in the Delhi zone. The Court issued a series of directions. It held that “an assessee as a deductee should not suffer because of fault made by deductor or inability of the Revenue to ask the deductor to rectify and correct”, and that “once payment has been received by the Revenue, credit should be given to the assessee”. It directed the Board to fix a time limit for verifying and correcting unmatched challans. It also recorded the department’s position that credit would be allowed despite an amount mismatch, within limits the Board had set, so long as name, PAN and assessment year matched. That decision was addressed to the department’s processes; it does not by itself put a credit into a particular return. This guide has not found an appeal against it.

In Yashpal Sahni v. ACIT (Bombay High Court, 18 July 2007), an employer deducted ₹6,66,000 from a managing director’s salary but did not deposit it or issue Form 16. The department refused the credit, raised a demand with interest, and recovered ₹17,89,587 by attaching his bank account. The High Court held that section 205 bars recovery from the employee “as soon as it is established that the tax has been deducted at source”, whether or not it was paid to the Government and whether or not a certificate was issued. The remedy lay against the employer under sections 201 and 221. The Court ordered the amount refunded with interest. It also held that the employee was not entitled to the credit itself. The demand was to be marked “not recoverable” instead. The distinction matters. Section 205 protects the deductee from being made to pay again, but section 199 credit, and therefore any refund of that tax, still depends on the deposit and the deductor’s statement.

The 2025 Act keeps both provisions: section 390(5) for credit and section 401 for the bar.

Signing and verification

AIS feedback is given after logging in to the portal. It needs no separate signature. The return that follows is verified in the ordinary way within 30 days of upload. See E-Verifying a Return.

What can be changed afterwards

AIS feedback can be modified at any time. The return is a different matter. If the reconciliation is done only after filing, the routes are the revised return, for AY 2026-27 up to 31 March 2027 (see Belated and Revised Returns), or, once that window closes, the updated return for income that was left out (see The Updated Return). An updated return cannot be used to claim TDS credit that increases a refund. For credit missing at processing, the route is rectification under section 154 once the deductor’s correction statement is reflected in Form 26AS.

Summary

1. Download the AIS, the TIS and Form 26AS for the financial year.
2. Match each TDS and TCS entry to Form 16 or 16A, and each AIS-only entry to bank, broker and property records.
3. Check the payment-of-taxes section against challan receipts.
4. Give feedback on every entry that is wrong: not fully correct, other PAN or year, duplicate, denied, or a customised option. Keep the acknowledgement.
5. For a missing TDS credit, ask the deductor to file a correction statement on TRACES. Feedback does not substitute for it.
6. File the return on the position taken in the feedback, and track the source’s response in the AIS.
7. If credit is refused at processing after the correction appears, seek rectification under section 154.

The next guide covers advance tax and self-assessment tax, and the e-Pay Tax challan through which both are paid.