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AIS vs 26AS vs your books: how to reconcile before you file

· 4 min read
The Sahidha team
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The income tax department already knows a surprising amount about your year — your interest, dividends, big transactions, salary TDS, and more. It hands you that view in two documents: Form 26AS and the AIS. If your return doesn't line up with them, you may get a query. The fix is simple: reconcile before you file.

caution

General educational information, not tax advice. Verify specifics with a qualified professional or incometax.gov.in.

What each document is​

  • Form 26AS — historically your "tax credit statement": TDS/TCS deducted on your behalf, advance tax and self-assessment tax paid, and certain high-value items. Think of it as taxes paid and credited.
  • AIS (Annual Information Statement) — a broader, newer statement: interest, dividends, securities and mutual-fund transactions, and other reported information, with a TIS (Taxpayer Information Summary) that aggregates it. Think of it as income and transactions reported about you.

Both are downloadable after logging in to the income tax portal.

Why mismatches happen (and they're common)​

  • Timing — a bank reports interest for a slightly different period than your own tally.
  • Joint accounts — interest/income reported fully against one holder.
  • Pre-filled estimates — some AIS figures are estimates, not the final number.
  • Duplicate reporting — the same transaction reported by two parties.
  • Your own miscategorisation — a self-transfer recorded as income, or a capital gain missed.

A mismatch isn't automatically a problem — but an unexplained one is what invites a notice.

A step-by-step reconciliation​

  1. Download Form 26AS, the AIS, and the TIS for the FY.
  2. Start with TDS (26AS): every entry where tax was deducted should map to an income you're reporting. Salary TDS → salary; FD TDS → interest income; etc.
  3. Walk the AIS line items: interest, dividends, securities transactions. Tick each against your own records.
  4. Match capital gains: reconcile the AIS securities/MF data against your broker and AMC capital-gains statements. This is the messiest area — go slow.
  5. Flag differences: for each mismatch decide — is it a timing difference, a joint-holding split, a department estimate, or a real omission in your return? Fix the real ones.
  6. Use the AIS feedback facility to mark genuinely wrong entries (e.g. income that isn't yours), keeping a note of what you submitted.
  7. Keep a one-page reconciliation note — what matched, what didn't, and why. If a query ever comes, you'll answer it in minutes.

The self-transfer trap​

If you moved money between your own bank accounts, that's not income — but high-value transfers can surface in your statements and confuse a manual tally. Make sure your books treat transfers as transfers, so the income you report matches reality (and the AIS) rather than being inflated by your own money moving around.

Don't ignore small interest and dividends​

The classic notice trigger: a few hundred rupees of savings-account interest or a small dividend that appears in your AIS but not your return. They're small, but the mismatch is what gets flagged. Capture them.

How Sahidha helps​

  • A clean, categorised ledger of every account makes line-by-line reconciliation against AIS/26AS fast instead of frantic.
  • Auto-detected transfers keep self-transfers out of your income, so your totals match the department's view.
  • Interest, dividend and capital-gains totals are already summarised per FY — the exact figures you're checking against the AIS.
  • Export your reconciliation pack to hand to your CA.

Reconciliation is tedious only when your data is scattered. Keep the books through the year and this becomes a 20-minute check.

👉 Sahidha is in the making — try it at sahidha.com and tell us what would make your filing prep easier.

Educational information only, not tax advice.