The Annual Information Statement (AIS) and the Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) are two views the Income-tax Department now publishes for every PAN-holder on the e-filing portal. They aggregate information the department has received about you from banks, mutual funds, registrars, employers, GST returns, foreign-remittance reports and the Statement of Financial Transactions framework under Section 285BA of the Income-tax Act. Reading them before you file your ITR is the cheapest piece of pre-return diligence available — and it has saved more clients from notices than any other single habit we recommend.
What AIS and TIS actually are
The Annual Information Statement is the granular ledger. For each transaction the department has been told about — a dividend payout, a mutual-fund redemption, a property purchase, a credit-card spend above the SFT threshold — AIS shows the date, the counterparty, the amount, and the source of the information. It runs into hundreds of line items for an active taxpayer.
The Taxpayer Information Summary is the rolled-up view: AIS aggregated by category (Salary, Interest, Dividend, Capital Gains, Foreign Remittance, etc.) with two columns — the value reported by the source, and the value “modified” if you have raised feedback. TIS is what the e-filing pre-fill engine uses to populate your ITR. So if TIS is wrong, the pre-fill is wrong — and you spend the next year unpicking notices.
Why this matters: the mismatch loop
Until 2021, taxpayers used Form 26AS as the single source for cross-checking. 26AS still exists, but it only captures TDS / TCS and a few other entries. AIS captures everything 26AS does plus dividend income reported by registrars, interest reported by banks under the SFT framework, mutual fund and equity-transaction data from depositories, foreign remittances flagged under FEMA, and several other streams. The breadth of AIS is the reason the department now opens mismatch enquiries faster — the data they have is more complete than what most taxpayers volunteer in the ITR.
If you file an ITR that omits an entry sitting in AIS, the e-filing portal flags it during processing. You receive an intimation under Section 143(1), sometimes followed by a notice under Section 139(9) for a defective return, and the file goes into manual review. The fix is straightforward when the AIS entry was correct and you missed it; it is far more painful when the AIS entry is itself wrong and needs to be corrected at the source.
The five-step pre-filing routine
Here is the routine we run for every individual ITR before we start data entry:
- Pull AIS and TIS from the e-filing portal. Log in to www.incometax.gov.in, navigate to Services → Annual Information Statement. Download the AIS as both PDF (for the audit trail) and JSON (for reconciliation work). Download TIS as PDF.
- Reconcile salary entries. The Salary section in TIS should match your Form 16 / Part B taxable income line. If it does not, ask your employer for an explanation before the ITR is filed. Mid-year employer changes are a common cause of mismatches.
- Reconcile interest income. Bank-reported interest in AIS often differs from what shows up on your bank passbook because banks report on accrual basis, not on payment. SB account interest, FD interest, RD interest, post-office deposits — each gets its own row. The reconciliation tool we use is a simple Excel pivot of AIS interest entries against the depositor name in the FD ledger.
- Reconcile dividend and capital-gains entries. Mutual fund AMCs and equity depositories report dividend payouts and STT-paid transactions. Long-term equity gains under Section 112A have to be reported with grandfathered-cost workings — AIS does not do the grandfathering for you, but it tells you which transactions to include.
- Raise feedback on incorrect entries. If AIS shows an entry you do not recognise or an amount that is wrong, the e-filing portal has a feedback module. The categories are: Information is correct, Income is not taxable, Information is not fully correct, Information relates to other PAN/year, Information is duplicate / included in other information, Information is denied. Pick the right category, add a short explanation, attach a supporting document if available. The source reporter (bank, AMC, registrar) is notified and your TIS gets a “modified value” column reflecting your position.
The traps that catch people
Trap 1: relying on TIS modified values that have not been accepted yet
When you raise feedback, TIS immediately shows the modified value — but the source reporter has not necessarily agreed. If they reject your feedback (or do not respond), the original value stands and your ITR is now in a mismatch position. Always wait for the feedback status to settle to Accepted or Partially accepted before filing — or file with a note in the ITR explaining the position.
Trap 2: capital-gains LTCG grandfathering
AIS reports the sale value of grandfathered listed equities, not the indexed acquisition cost. You have to compute the cost yourself using the 31 January 2018 NAV / market price under Section 112A’s grandfathering clause. Many taxpayers file the gross sale value as taxable, which over-states gain materially.
Trap 3: foreign-asset reporting
If AIS shows a foreign remittance you sent or received under the Liberalised Remittance Scheme, your ITR needs Schedule FA filled in. Missing Schedule FA when AIS has the entry triggers an immediate defective return notice. We see this most often with NRIs receiving funds in India and with residents sending funds for overseas property or stocks.
Trap 4: dividend timing
Some AMCs report dividend on record date, others on payment date. If AIS shows a dividend in the wrong financial year, raise feedback rather than including it in the year the AMC reported — otherwise you may end up paying tax twice when the actual year’s data reconciles later.
What to do if you have already filed and AIS shows a mismatch
If your filed ITR is in a mismatch position against AIS, you have three routes:
- Revised return under Section 139(5) — available till three months before the end of the relevant assessment year, or before the completion of assessment, whichever is earlier. This is the cleanest fix when the mismatch is on your side.
- Updated return (ITR-U) under Section 139(8A) — available for up to four years from the end of the relevant assessment year, with payment of additional tax (25% / 50% / 60% / 70% depending on when you file). Use this only when revision is no longer possible.
- AIS feedback — if the mismatch is on the source reporter’s side, raise feedback on the AIS entry itself and ask the reporter to correct their filing. This is slower but does not require touching your ITR.
The practitioner’s habit
For our retainer clients we pull AIS and TIS in early June each year, before the ITR season starts, and run the reconciliation against the books. That gives us four to six weeks to raise feedback, follow up with banks and AMCs on disputed entries, and have a clean position by the time we start the actual filing. The clients who self-file get the same checklist sent in early June. Two hours of reconciliation work in June prevents a six-month notice loop the following January.
Sources
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