Before the Income Tax Department reads your return, it has already read you: every TDS credit, property deal, large deposit, mutual fund trade and interest credit sits in two statements — Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement (AIS). Filing without reading them is how honest taxpayers earn mismatch notices. Thirty minutes with these two documents before filing prevents ninety per cent of post-filing pain. Here is how to read them like a professional.
Form 26AS: your tax-credit passbook
- TDS deducted by everyone who paid you — employers, banks, customers — section-wise and quarter-wise
- TCS collected on your purchases (foreign remittances, vehicles, etc.)
- Advance tax and self-assessment tax you deposited (verify challan amounts landed correctly)
- Refunds issued and, in the annexures, specified high-value transactions
The single rule: claim TDS credit in your return only as it appears in 26AS. Credit claimed beyond 26AS is auto-flagged; credit appearing but unclaimed is your money left behind. Download it from the e-filing portal (via TRACES) for the full year after Q4 filings settle — typically June onwards.
AIS: the department's diary about you
The AIS is broader and newer — reported by banks, registrars, companies and platforms: salary, interest (savings, FD, even accrued), dividends, securities and mutual fund transactions with values, property purchases and sales, rent received (where reported), foreign remittances under LRS, credit card spends and large cash deposits. Alongside sits the TIS (Taxpayer Information Summary), the department's processed totals which pre-fill your return. Treat AIS as the checklist of income the department expects to see explained in your ITR.
The pre-filing reconciliation routine
- Match every 26AS TDS entry to your books/Form 16/16A — chase deductors whose filings are missing or wrong before you file
- Walk AIS line by line against your records: interest certificates, broker statements, property documents
- Flag AIS entries that are wrong, duplicated or not yours — joint-account interest fully attributed to you, a property deal reported twice, someone else's PAN typo
- Use the AIS feedback mechanism on such entries (options like 'information is not fully correct', 'relates to another PAN/year') — feedback creates a record that protects you later
- Ensure every AIS income category has a home in your ITR, even exempt ones properly disclosed
FD interest (banks report accrued interest you never withdrew), dividends credited directly to bank, savings interest across forgotten accounts, and mutual-fund switches (each switch is a reported 'sale'). These four produce most small-taxpayer notices — and all are visible in AIS before you file.
For businesses specifically
Business owners should add three checks: customers' TDS (194C/194J) in 26AS versus your revenue ledger — gaps mean a customer deducted but didn't deposit or misquoted your PAN; GST turnover versus AIS/TIS business receipts where reported — large unexplained divergence invites scrutiny; and TCS credits on your purchases (scrap, coal, foreign travel) that many businesses forget to claim. Reconcile before filing, and file the reconciliations away — they answer future notices in minutes.
If you spot errors after filing
AIS keeps updating as reporters file corrections, so a clean pre-filing AIS can grow a new entry later. If a genuine income surfaced post-filing, a revised or updated return fixes it cheapest. If the entry is simply wrong, submit AIS feedback and keep evidence; a mismatch notice, if it comes, is then a reply with attachments rather than a scramble. The department's automation is aggressive but document-driven — the taxpayer with reconciliations wins these exchanges routinely.
How Aidwish helps
Aidwish runs the 26AS/AIS reconciliation as standard pre-filing hygiene for client businesses and founders — chasing deductor gaps, filing AIS feedback, and mapping every reported line into the return — so filings match the department's data before the department checks.