Form 26AS vs AIS mismatch — how to fix it before filing

Every year, around July, lakhs of salaried Indians open the income tax portal, stare at two documents they’re supposed to reconcile, and wonder why the numbers don’t match. Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement look like they should say the same thing. They don’t, always. And if you file without sorting this out, you’re either leaving yourself exposed to a tax notice or overpaying when you didn’t need to.

Here’s what’s actually happening, and what you need to do about it.

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What These Two Documents Actually Are

Form 26AS is basically your tax passbook. It shows all the TDS — Tax Deducted at Source, meaning tax that was cut before the money even reached you — that’s been deposited against your PAN with the government. Your employer deducts TDS from your salary every month and deposits it with the Income Tax Department. Form 26AS confirms that deposit happened.

AIS (Annual Information Statement) is broader. It pulls in data from multiple sources — your bank, your broker, your mutual fund platform, the property registrar, even foreign remittances. If you sold ₹2.3 lakh worth of mutual funds on Groww last year, that’ll show up in AIS. If your SBI savings account paid you ₹18,000 in interest, AIS knows.

The mismatch problem happens because these two documents are pulling from different sources, and sometimes those sources haven’t synced correctly.

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The Two Mismatches That Actually Matter

There are a few ways these documents diverge, but most salaried people between 25 and 40 hit the same two issues.

First: TDS amounts don’t match. Say you work at a mid-sized IT firm in Pune earning ₹12 lakh a year. Your employer deducted ₹95,000 in TDS over the financial year. Form 26AS might show only ₹80,000 because your employer filed one quarter’s TDS return late, or made an error in the challan — the payment slip used to deposit tax. AIS picks up the same ₹80,000 because it’s reading the same government database. Both documents agree, but both are wrong compared to what was actually cut from your salary.

Second: Income figures are inflated or duplicated in AIS. This one trips up a lot of people who invest. If you redeemed ₹5 lakh from an HDFC Mutual Fund SIP on Kuvera, the registrar (CAMS or KFintech) reports the full redemption amount to the tax department. AIS shows ₹5 lakh as income. But only a fraction of that is actual gain — if you originally invested ₹3.8 lakh over three years, your actual profit is ₹1.2 lakh. AIS doesn’t automatically separate cost from gain. That’s your job when filing.

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What You Do About It, Step by Step

Open the income tax portal at incometax.gov.in, log in with your PAN, and download both documents. Form 26AS is under the “e-file” tab. AIS is under “Annual Information Statement” — you’ll also see a companion document called TIS (Taxpayer Information Summary) which is essentially a cleaned-up version of AIS.

Now compare the TDS figures. If your salary slips show ₹95,000 deducted but Form 26AS shows ₹80,000, you need to go to your HR or payroll team immediately — before filing. The shortfall needs to be deposited and the TDS return corrected. Don’t file until it’s fixed, because you’ll only get credit for what’s reflected in Form 26AS.

For AIS discrepancies — say it’s showing ₹5 lakh in mutual fund redemptions but some of it is wrong, or a transaction belongs to someone else — you can actually submit feedback directly on the portal. In AIS, next to each transaction, there’s a “Feedback” option. You can mark a transaction as “Information is correct,” “Information is not fully correct,” “Information relates to other person/year,” or “Information is duplicate.” Use this. It doesn’t change what you’re taxed on, but it helps the department understand the discrepancy and reduces the chance of an automated notice later.

The thing most people skip: reconcile your interest income. If your SBI and HDFC savings accounts earned a combined ₹24,000 in interest last year, and your fixed deposits added another ₹31,000, that ₹55,000 needs to show up in your ITR under “Income from Other Sources” — even if no TDS was cut because each deposit was below the ₹40,000 threshold. AIS will have it. If your ITR doesn’t, that’s a mismatch the system will flag.

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File After, Not During, the Reconciliation

The instinct is to file early and be done with it. Resist that if you’ve spotted a mismatch. A notice under Section 143(1) — an automated intimation the department sends when your return doesn’t match their data — is annoying to respond to and takes months to resolve. Spending an extra week sorting out the numbers now is worth it.

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Frequently Asked Questions

Does AIS mismatch mean I’ll definitely get a tax notice?

Not automatically, but it raises the probability of an automated scrutiny flag. If the gap is significant — say AIS shows ₹1 lakh more income than you’ve declared — the system is likely to flag it. Smaller discrepancies sometimes pass through without issue, but there’s no reliable threshold, so it’s better to reconcile everything before filing.

Can I file my ITR if Form 26AS and AIS still don’t match?

Yes, you can still file. Use the figures from your actual documents — salary slips, bank statements, broker statements — and file correctly. Submit feedback on AIS to flag the incorrect entries. Your return should reflect the true income, not the erroneous AIS figure.

What if my employer hasn’t deposited TDS correctly and Form 26AS is short?

You cannot claim TDS credit for tax that isn’t reflected in Form 26AS, even if it was deducted from your salary. Escalate to your HR or finance team to correct the TDS return. If the financial year is still open, they can file a revised return. This is entirely your employer’s responsibility to fix.

Is AIS the same as Form 26AS now? Has 26AS been replaced?

They co-exist. Form 26AS now focuses specifically on TDS and TCS (Tax Collected at Source). AIS is the broader statement covering all financial transactions. You need to check both — they serve different purposes and won’t always show the same numbers.

What is TIS and do I need to look at it too?

TIS is the Taxpayer Information Summary — a simplified version of AIS that shows aggregated income figures category-wise. It’s useful as a quick cross-check when filling in your ITR, especially for interest income, dividend income, and securities transactions. Think of it as AIS with the clutter removed.