Annual Information Statement vs Form 26AS: Now get more information at one place to file ITR

The Income Tax Department has announced the roll-out of a new statement – Annual Information Statement (AIS) – which would provide you with almost all details about your financial transactions during the year.

So far, the Income Tax Department has been issuing Form 26AS to provide information related to taxable income and tax deducted at source (TDS), which will now be replaced with the Annual Information Statement (AIS).

Compared to Form 26AS, AIS is a much more detailed one, with many more details included – like interests credited to your Savings Bank Accounts, all Mutual Fund (MF) transactions during the year, etc.

“AIS is more detailed than Form 26AS and is a complete financial summary of all the data, which is there with the Income Tax Department,” said CA Karan Batra, Founder and CEO, CharteredClub.com, adding, “It includes values of share sale and purchase, savings bank interest, etc.”

So, AIS would make filing Income Tax Return (ITR) easier by providing more information at a single place than the Form 26AS.

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The AIS aims to capture all financial transactions of the previous year like –

a) Stocks
b) Insurance
c) Credit Cards
d) Purchase of property
e) Mutual Funds
f) Salary or Business income
g) Dividends
h) Interest on SB A/c and Deposits.

The above list is just indicative. It is your overall financial profile and will getting fine-tuned to include more categories.

“The new Annual Information Statement (AIS) will provide comprehensive information relating to the taxpayer. AIS will contain more information as compared to existing form 26AS which primarily provide information relating to TDS and TCS transactions. The new AIS statement, apart from the basic information of the taxpayer, will provide information relating to purchase or sale of immovable properties / securities, foreign remittance, mutual fund transaction, information received by the tax department from any other country under exchange of information and information relating to payment of taxes/demand/refund/pending proceedings/completed proceedings, etc,” said Gopal Bohra, Partner, NA Shah Associates.

“Thus, the new AIS statement will provide comprehensive information of the taxpayer and will be significantly useful while preparing the tax return. The information will be provided in AIS after removing duplicate information and taxpayer can download such information in PDF, JSON, CSV formats. A taxpayer can submit online feedback if the information is erroneous or refers to another person/year, or is duplicate,” he added.