Here is something many people do not realise: by the time you sit down to file your income tax return, the tax department already knows a surprising amount about your money. Your bank has reported the interest it paid you. Your employer has reported your salary and the tax it deducted. Your mutual fund house has reported your redemptions. All of this flows into a few statements on the income tax portal.

Filing season for AY 2026-27, which covers income earned in FY 2025-26 (1 April 2025 to 31 March 2026), is the right time to look at these statements before you type a single number into your return. This is called reconciliation, and doing it early is one of the simplest ways to avoid a tax notice later. This guide explains the WHY before the WHAT.

Chapter 1

Why does reconciliation matter?

When you file your ITR, the numbers you report should broadly match what third parties have already reported about you. If you declare ₹40,000 of bank interest but your banks reported ₹95,000, the system sees a mismatch. Mismatches are the most common trigger for automated queries and notices from the department.

The fix is not complicated. You simply check the department's own records first, then make sure your return reflects them. Think of it as comparing your bank passbook against the bank's statement before you sign off. You are not trying to game anything - you are just making sure both sides tell the same story.

There are three documents that hold this information, and it helps to know what each one is for.

Chapter 2

Form 26AS: your tax credit statement

Form 26AS is the oldest of the three and the narrowest today. Since AY 2023-24, it mainly shows tax-related entries: TDS (tax deducted at source, for example by your employer or bank), TCS (tax collected at source, for example on some high-value purchases), advance tax and self-assessment tax you have paid, and any refunds.

Its most important job is to confirm that tax deducted on your behalf has actually reached the government against your PAN. If your employer deducted TDS but it does not appear in Form 26AS, you would not get credit for it, and you could end up paying that tax twice. So Form 26AS answers one question well: how much tax has already been paid in my name?

Chapter 3

AIS: the wide-angle view

The Annual Information Statement (AIS) is much broader. It is a comprehensive summary of financial information reported about you by various institutions - banks, mutual funds, companies, registrars and others.

Beyond the TDS and TCS you also see in Form 26AS, the AIS can include savings and fixed deposit interest, dividends, securities and mutual fund transactions, purchase and sale of property, foreign remittances, and more. In other words, Form 26AS tells you what tax was deducted, while the AIS tries to show the underlying income and transactions themselves.

A useful feature of the AIS is feedback. If an entry is wrong - say a transaction that is not yours, or an amount that looks doubled - you can mark it with feedback such as "information is not fully correct" or "information relates to other PAN". This does not automatically change your tax, but it flags your side of the story and creates a record. Always check entries rather than assuming they are final; reported data can occasionally be duplicated or misattributed.

Chapter 4

TIS: the summary that pre-fills your return

The Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) is a simplified, category-wise summary of the AIS. It groups the detailed AIS entries into totals - total interest, total dividend, and so on - and this is the data that helps pre-fill parts of your ITR.

The order to think about it is: AIS is the detailed ledger, TIS is the summary of that ledger, and the pre-filled figures in your return draw from it. If the TIS total looks off, that is your cue to open the detailed AIS and find the specific entry behind it.

Chapter 5

How do you check them?

All three are on the income tax portal. Log in at incometax.gov.in using your PAN. From the dashboard, open the "Annual Information Statement (AIS)" menu, click Proceed, and you will reach the AIS section with separate tiles for the AIS and the TIS. Form 26AS is available under the e-file or Services menu (it opens through the linked TRACES portal).

You can view these on screen or download them. If you download the PDF, note that it is password protected - the password is usually your PAN in lowercase followed by your date of birth in DDMMYYYY format, for example aaaaa1111a01011990. Keep the downloaded files private, since they contain sensitive financial detail.

Chapter 6

A simple reconciliation checklist

Work through it calmly, one line at a time:

  • Open Form 26AS and confirm every TDS entry you expect is there - salary, bank interest, any professional payments. Note the total tax already paid in your name.
  • Open the AIS and skim each category. For interest and dividends, check that the totals look right against your own bank and demat records.
  • Compare the AIS totals with the TIS summary, and then with the pre-filled figures in your ITR.
  • Where something is genuinely wrong in the AIS, submit feedback with the correct position.
  • Where the AIS is right but your memory was incomplete, update your return so it matches. Small forgotten interest amounts from an old savings account are a very common gap.

The goal is not a perfect match to the last rupee, but no large, unexplained differences.

Chapter 7

Deadlines worth keeping in mind

For AY 2026-27, the due date for most individual taxpayers who are not subject to audit is 31 July 2026. If you miss it, you can still file a belated return up to 31 December 2026, but late filing attracts a fee under Section 234F - up to ₹1,000 if your total income is up to ₹5 lakh, and up to ₹5,000 if it is above ₹5 lakh, along with interest on any unpaid tax. Checking your statements a couple of weeks before the deadline leaves time to sort out any mismatch without rushing.

Chapter 8

What this means for you

You do not have to reconstruct your entire year from scratch. The tax department has already assembled much of the picture in Form 26AS, the AIS and the TIS. Your job is to read those statements, make sure your return agrees with them, and correct anything that is genuinely wrong through AIS feedback. Doing this before you file - rather than after a notice arrives - turns filing from a nervous guess into a calm cross-check.

Disclaimer This is an educational guide, not financial, investment or tax advice. For your specific situation, consider consulting a qualified tax professional.This is an educational guide, not financial, investment or tax advice. For your specific situation, consider consulting a qualified tax professional.
Chapter 9

Sources