Jul 07, 2026, 09:38:59 AM IST

Before you file your income tax return, there's one document worth checking first: the Annual Information Statement, or AIS. It's a complete snapshot of your financial year, built to help you file accurately and avoid surprises later.

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AIS is a comprehensive statement that shows the tax department everything it knows about your finances for the year, from salary and interest to high-value transactions. It's designed to make filing easier by letting you cross-check your numbers before you submit your return.

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AIS isn't just for your convenience. It helps the tax department promote voluntary compliance, enables smoother prefilling of returns, and makes it harder for mismatches or non-disclosures to slip through unnoticed.

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The first section of AIS covers your personal details: PAN, masked Aadhaar number, name, date of birth or incorporation, mobile number, email, and address. Think of it as your identity snapshot within the statement.

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This is the section that matters most for filing. It includes your TDS and TCS details, financial transactions reported by banks and institutions (SFT data), tax payments like advance tax and self-assessment tax, and any demand or refund activity for the year.

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Since AY 2023-24, Form 26AS only shows TDS and TCS data. Everything else, investments, high-value transactions, other income sources, now lives in AIS. If you're only checking Form 26AS, you're missing half the picture.

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Found something incorrect in your AIS? Log in to the Income Tax e-Filing Portal, go to Services, open AIS, click the flagged entry, and hit the Optional feedback button. Choose the reason, like "incorrect," "duplicate," or "belongs to another PAN" -and submit.

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Once you submit, your feedback appears alongside the original entry, along with a modified value. You'll get email and SMS confirmation, plus an Acknowledgement Receipt you can download for your records, so there's always a paper trail.

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If you've submitted multiple corrections, the AIS Consolidated Feedback File (ACF) compiles all your feedback into a single downloadable PDF, making it easy to review everything you've flagged in one place before you file.

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