Annual Information Statement (AIS): What It Is and How to Use It

• Access: Income Tax e-filing portal, under “Services > Annual Information Statement”
• Covers: salary, interest, dividends, securities and mutual fund transactions, foreign remittances (TCS), property purchases, and other high-value transactions
• Broader than Form 26AS, which covers only TDS/TCS — AIS aggregates data from banks, employers, registrars, and other reporting entities
• A related "feedback" mechanism lets you flag an incorrect entry directly on the portal
• Mismatches between your ITR and AIS are a common trigger for a scrutiny notice — reconcile before filing, not after
• Home loan applicants can use AIS to independently verify their own reported income and interest figures match what a lender's assessment will reference.

The Annual Information Statement is a detailed, PAN-linked summary of financial information the Income Tax Department has received about you from third-party sources — employers, banks, registrars, mutual fund houses, and other entities required to report specified transactions.

AIS is meant to be checked before you file your return, not treated as a passive record you glance at afterward — its entire value lies in catching a mismatch between what you're about to declare and what the department already has on file for you.

AIS aggregates information across several distinct categories, each reported to the tax department by a different type of entity.

This breadth is what distinguishes AIS from Form 26AS, which shows only TDS and TCS entries — AIS additionally captures transactions where no tax was deducted at all but which the department still tracks, such as certain securities trades or high-value cash transactions.

Taxpayers often confuse these two documents, and the distinction matters for which one you should reconcile your return against.

In practice, both remain relevant: Form 26AS confirms your TDS/TCS credit specifically, while AIS gives the fuller picture of what the department has recorded about your broader financial activity for the year — checking both, rather than either alone, is the more complete approach before filing.

1. Log in to the Income Tax e-filing portal at incometax.gov.in.
2. Navigate to Services > Annual Information Statement (AIS).
3. Select the relevant financial year.
4. Review the Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) — a simplified, category-wise aggregate view.
5. Open the detailed AIS for line-item entries within each category.
6. Compare each entry against your own records — Form 16, bank statements, broker statements.
7. Where an entry looks incorrect or doesn't belong to you, use the feedback option directly on the portal to flag it.
    

The portal distinguishes between the TIS (a summarised view, useful for an at-a-glance check) and the full AIS (the detailed underlying entries) — start with TIS to spot obvious mismatches, then drill into AIS for the specific transaction detail if something looks off.

Finding an entry in your AIS that doesn't match your own records — an interest figure that's off, or a transaction you don't recognise — is not unusual, and the portal has a built-in process for it rather than requiring you to simply accept the figure.

1. Open the specific entry within AIS.
2. Select the feedback option and choose the reason the entry is incorrect (duplicate, not applicable to you, incorrect amount, and so on).
3. Submit your feedback with any relevant explanation.
4. The reporting entity is expected to review and, where warranted, correct the underlying data.
5. File your ITR based on the correct figure, keeping your feedback submission as a reference in case of a later query.

Filing your return based on your own correct figure, after submitting feedback on the discrepancy, is the right sequence — waiting indefinitely for the correction to reflect before filing risks missing your filing deadline.

Consider Nisha, a 29-year-old marketing manager in Hyderabad earning Rs. 95,000 a month, with a CIBIL score of 731, preparing to file her ITR for the year and separately planning to apply for a home loan in the coming months.

Had she skipped this check and let the incorrect entry stand, the mismatch between her AIS and her actual bank records could have surfaced during the lender's own verification, adding delay to an otherwise straightforward application. Nisha now checks her AIS every year before filing, treating it as a standard pre-filing step rather than something to do only when something feels off.

Bajaj Finance offers home loans from 7.25% p.a.* with amounts up to Rs. 15 Crore* and tenures up to 32 years. Reviewing your own AIS before applying helps you spot and resolve any income-reporting mismatch ahead of time, rather than having it surface mid-application. Check your home loan eligibility once your records are reconciled.