AIS vs 26AS is less a contest than a division of labour. Form 26AS, the Annual Tax Statement on the TRACES portal, now shows the tax deducted or collected against your PAN. The Annual Information Statement (AIS) on the e-filing portal shows almost everything else the Income Tax Department has heard about you: interest, dividends, share and mutual fund trades, property deals, foreign remittances and more. The Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) sits inside AIS and adds those entries up, category by category, for pre-filling your return.
The split is spelled out in the department’s FAQs on AIS: from assessment year 2023-24, Form 26AS “displays only TDS/TCS related data”, and other details are in AIS. If you still treat 26AS as the full record of your year, you are looking at the smaller of the two statements.
The three statements side by side
| Form 26AS | AIS | TIS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Where | TRACES portal, reached from the e-filing account | Compliance portal, via the AIS menu on incometax.gov.in | Inside AIS, as a separate tile |
| What it shows | TDS and TCS against your PAN | TDS/TCS, high-value transactions reported by banks and others, tax payments, refunds and other information | Totals by category, such as salary, interest and dividend |
| Can you respond? | No | Yes, entry by entry | Updates automatically from AIS feedback |
| Used for | Checking tax credit you claim | Checking that no income or transaction is missing | Pre-filling the return |
What Form 26AS still does
Form 26AS answers one question: how much tax has someone else paid to the government on your behalf? Your employer’s TDS on salary, a bank’s TDS on deposit interest and TCS collected by a seller all appear here. That is the credit you claim in your return, so the figure in your ITR should match it.
If tax was deducted but does not show up, take it up with the deductor. The entry comes from the TDS statement the deductor files against your PAN, so a wrong PAN or a statement not yet filed has to be corrected at its end.
Two routes now exist on TRACES, according to the department’s page on viewing the Annual Tax Statement. For assessment years up to 2026-27, under the Income-tax Act, 1961, you open “Compliance under Income Tax Act, 1961”, go to View/Verify Tax Credit and choose “View Form 26AS/Annual Tax Statement”. For tax year 2026-27 onwards, under the Income-tax Act, 2025, the statement sits under “e-File & View”, then “View Annual Tax Statement”, where you choose the tax year and a format. Our explainer on what the Income-tax Act, 2025 changes covers the move from assessment years to tax years.
What AIS adds
AIS is the wider record. The department’s AIS page lists what the statement can carry, including TDS and TCS, specified financial transactions (SFTs) reported by banks, mutual funds and other reporting entities, tax payments, demands and refunds, GST return information, foreign remittances reported in Form 15CC, dividends and mutual fund purchases reported by registrars, off-market transfers reported by depositories and interest on income tax refunds.
The statement is in two parts. Part A holds your identity details: PAN, masked Aadhaar, name, date of birth, mobile number, email and address. Part B is divided into TDS/TCS information, SFT information, payment of taxes, demand and refund, and other information. The FAQs note that demand details are not available in AIS at present, and that GST turnover appears under the code EXC-GSTR3B in the “Other information” tab.
AIS is not complete, and the department says so. Its FAQs state that AIS “includes information presently available” with the department and that “there may be other transactions” not displayed. Income that no bank, employer, registrar or other reporting entity tells the department about will not be there. A clean AIS does not mean a complete return.
Information also arrives late. The CBDT has authorised the Director General of Income-tax (Systems) to upload several of these categories, such as GST data, foreign remittances and registrar reports, within three months from the end of the month in which the information is received. Checking AIS in April and again just before filing is sensible.
Form No. 168 from Tax Year 2026-27
AIS is also getting a new form number. The CBDT’s FAQs on interplay and transition to the Income-tax Act, 2025 say the Annual Information Statement continues for periods under the 1961 Act, up to AY 2026-27, and from Tax Year 2026-27 “will stand replaced by Form No. 168 as the evolved Annual Information Statement”. The statements are generated separately for each year, and both are on the e-filing portal: tax deducted in March 2026 shows in the AIS for AY 2026-27, tax deducted in April 2026 in Form No. 168 for Tax Year 2026-27.
The same FAQs warn that mismatches can arise during the changeover if a deductor quotes old-Act section numbers or picks the wrong year on a challan or TDS return, and advise deductees to reconcile early.
TIS: the summary the return form reads
The FAQs describe TIS as an “information category wise aggregated information summary”. For each category it shows two numbers: the value processed by the system, after duplicates are removed by pre-defined rules, and the value accepted by you or confirmed by the source after your feedback. The accepted value is what is used to pre-fill the return, where pre-filling applies.
So TIS is where a duplicate entry hurts. If the same interest has been reported twice and the system’s de-duplication misses it, the TIS total counts it twice until you flag one entry in AIS.
How to give feedback on AIS
You can respond to entries under TDS/TCS information, SFT information and other information. According to the department’s AIS page, the options are:
- information is correct;
- information is not fully correct;
- information relates to other PAN or year;
- information is duplicate or included in other information;
- information is denied; and
- customised feedback for the category, such as “income is not taxable” for an income entry.
Open the relevant tab, expand the source, and click “Optional” in the feedback column. Several entries can be handled together with Bulk Feedback. The FAQs say the modified value then appears next to the reported value, you get an acknowledgement in Activity History along with email and SMS confirmation, and you can change feedback as many times as you need. The department’s AIS page adds that your feedback may be shared with the information source for its response.
Feedback is not a quiet edit. If you mark an entry as wrong, keep the bank statement, contract note or certificate that shows why.
Downloading the statements
AIS downloads as PDF or JSON for the whole statement, and by category as a spreadsheet. The PDF password is your PAN in lower case followed by your date of birth as DDMMYYYY, according to the department’s AIS page. An offline AIS Utility, from the Resources tab of the AIS homepage, lets you import the JSON file, prepare feedback and upload it later. The department also lists a mobile app, “AIS for Taxpayer”.
Which one to check, and when
- Before filing: open TIS to see the totals, then AIS for the line-by-line entries behind them. Flag duplicates or entries that are not yours before you file, so that pre-filled figures are right.
- For tax credit: match the TDS and TCS you claim against Form 26AS. When the department launched AIS, in a CBDT press release of 1 November 2021, it said that where TDS/TCS or tax payment details differ between 26AS on TRACES and AIS, taxpayers may rely on TRACES for filing and other compliance.
- For income you know about but cannot see: report it anyway. Neither statement limits what you must declare.
- After filing: if AIS later shows income you left out, the 2021 press release says the return may be revised to include it.
Crypto traders should also read our Schedule VDA guide, which explains where gains on virtual digital assets go in the return. For the tax that applies to your income under each regime, use our income tax calculator.
