If you have ever logged in to the income-tax e-filing portal before filing your return, you have likely run into three documents with confusingly similar names: Form 26AS, the Annual Information Statement (AIS), and the Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS). Each is published by the Income-tax Department, each carries your financial footprint for the year, and many taxpayers have no idea why all three exist.
The short version: Form 26AS is your tax credits record, AIS is the full ledger of income reported about you, and TIS is the simplified summary the portal uses to pre-fill your return. Get the difference clear and you will file faster, avoid duplicate-income errors, and dodge the mismatch notices that catch lakhs of taxpayers every year.
What is Form 26AS?
Form 26AS is your Tax Credit Statement. Its core job is to show the taxes paid against your PAN during the financial year, so you can claim them correctly when you file.
What Form 26AS primarily contains
- TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) — tax your employer, bank, or any other deductor withheld on salary, interest, rent, professional fees and so on.
- TCS (Tax Collected at Source) — for example, tax collected on certain high-value purchases or foreign remittances under the LRS.
- Advance tax and self-assessment tax you paid directly through challans.
- Income-tax refunds issued to you during the year.
Over the years the department also added some high-value transaction details to 26AS, but most of that reporting has now shifted to the AIS. Think of Form 26AS today as the authoritative answer to one question: how much tax has already been paid in my name? If your bank deducted TDS on your fixed deposit interest, that credit must show up here for you to claim it.
What is the AIS (Annual Information Statement)?
The AIS is a comprehensive statement of the financial information reported to the Income-tax Department about you by third parties — banks, mutual funds, registrars, sub-registrars, employers and others. Where 26AS focuses on tax credits, the AIS focuses on the income and transactions behind them.
What the AIS captures
- Interest earned on savings accounts, fixed deposits and recurring deposits.
- Dividends credited by companies and mutual funds.
- Purchase and sale of securities and mutual fund units.
- Sale or purchase of immovable property reported by the sub-registrar.
- Foreign remittances, salary, rent receipts and other reported transactions.
Crucially, the AIS shows two values for many entries — the reported value (what the third party submitted) and a modified value (after you submit feedback). This feedback feature is what makes the AIS powerful: if a bank double-reported your FD interest or tagged a transaction to the wrong PAN, you can flag it directly inside the AIS rather than letting it inflate your income.
What is the TIS (Taxpayer Information Summary)?
The TIS is a simplified, category-wise summary derived from the AIS. If the AIS is the detailed ledger, the TIS is the one-page balance — it rolls up each information category (salary, interest, dividend, capital gains and so on) into a single processed figure.
For each category the TIS shows the value reported by sources, the value after your feedback is processed, and the derived value the department uses to pre-fill your income-tax return. When the portal auto-populates numbers into your ITR, those numbers come from the TIS. So if you have submitted feedback in the AIS, the TIS reflects the corrected figure once it is processed. In practice, you read the AIS to investigate the detail and check the TIS to see the bottom-line number that will land in your return.
Form 26AS vs AIS vs TIS: side-by-side comparison
| Aspect | Form 26AS | AIS | TIS |
|---|---|---|---|
| Full name | Tax Credit Statement | Annual Information Statement | Taxpayer Information Summary |
| Primary focus | Taxes paid in your name | Income & transactions reported about you | Summary of the AIS for pre-filling |
| Level of detail | Credit-level | Highly detailed, transaction-level | Condensed, category-wise |
| Shows TDS / TCS | Yes (core purpose) | Yes, with the underlying income | Yes, summarised by category |
| Lists each income source | Limited | Yes, comprehensively | Aggregated per category |
| Lets you submit feedback | No | Yes | Reflects processed AIS feedback |
| Used to pre-fill your ITR | Partly (tax credits) | Underlying data | Yes — derived values feed the ITR |
How the three documents connect
It helps to picture a flow. Third parties report your transactions to the Income-tax Department. That raw data populates the AIS in full detail. The department then condenses it, applies any feedback you have submitted, and produces the TIS — the digested summary that pre-fills your return. Running alongside, Form 26AS records the tax credits (TDS, TCS, advance tax, refunds) tied to those same transactions.
So the AIS and TIS are two views of the same income data at different zoom levels, while 26AS is the tax-paid lens over the year. You do not pick one and ignore the others — a careful filer cross-checks tax credits against 26AS and income against the AIS/TIS. To estimate the tax on the income these statements reveal, our free income-tax and investment calculators can help you sanity-check the numbers before you file.
Where to find them on the e-filing portal
All three are available after you log in to the official Income-tax Department e-filing portal at incometax.gov.in. The route differs slightly:
- Form 26AS — under the e-File menu, look for Income Tax Returns > View Form 26AS, which redirects you to the TRACES portal where 26AS is hosted.
- AIS and TIS — both sit together under the AIS section of the portal. Open the AIS tile and you will see two tabs or downloads: the Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) and the full Annual Information Statement (AIS).
You can view them on screen or download them. The AIS download is password-protected, with the password typically being your PAN (in lowercase) followed by your date of birth in DDMMYYYY format.
How to reconcile before filing — and submit AIS feedback
Reconciliation is the single most valuable habit when filing. Before you submit your ITR, set your own records side by side with these statements.
Step 1: Match tax credits against Form 26AS
Confirm that every bit of TDS and TCS you expect — from salary, FD interest, rent and so on — appears in 26AS. If a deductor withheld tax but it is missing here, you cannot claim that credit until it is fixed, so follow up with the deductor.
Step 2: Match income against AIS and TIS
Go through the AIS line by line. Common income items such as FD and savings interest, dividends and capital gains on mutual funds should match your own bank and broker records. Interest income is a frequent trouble spot — read our guide on whether FD interest is taxable and the TDS rules for 2026 so you report it correctly and do not under-state it.
Step 3: Submit feedback on anything wrong
If the AIS shows an entry that is incorrect — duplicated, belongs to someone else, or has the wrong amount — use the feedback option against that entry. You can mark it as "information is not fully correct", "relates to other PAN", "duplicate", and so on. Once processed, the corrected value flows into the TIS and your pre-filled return, preventing inflated income.
Step 4: Reconcile, then file
Only once your records agree with 26AS (credits) and the AIS/TIS (income) should you finalise the return. If you genuinely earned something the AIS missed, you must still report it — the AIS is informational, not a ceiling.
Why mismatches trigger notices
The Income-tax Department's systems compare what you report in your ITR against the data in the AIS. A gap — say, FD interest visible in your AIS but absent from your return, or dividend income you forgot — can flag your return for scrutiny and generate an automated mismatch communication or notice. These are largely avoidable: reconciling against the AIS before filing, and submitting feedback on genuinely wrong entries, closes the gap the system is looking for. Treat the AIS as a preview of what the department already knows.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Form 26AS still needed now that the AIS exists?
Yes. Form 26AS remains the authoritative record of taxes paid in your name — TDS, TCS, advance tax and refunds — which you rely on to claim credits. The AIS complements it by detailing the income behind those credits, but it does not replace 26AS.
What is the main difference between AIS and TIS?
The AIS is the detailed, transaction-level statement of everything reported about you. The TIS is the condensed, category-wise summary derived from the AIS, showing the processed values used to pre-fill your income-tax return. TIS is essentially the digested version of the AIS.
What should I do if the AIS shows wrong information?
Use the feedback option against the specific entry in the AIS and mark it appropriately — for example, duplicate, relates to another PAN, or incorrect amount. Once the Income-tax Department processes your feedback, the corrected figure flows into the TIS and your pre-filled return.
Can I file my return using only the pre-filled AIS data?
You can use the pre-filled data as a starting point, but you should still reconcile it against your own records. The AIS may miss some income or contain errors, and you are responsible for reporting your full actual income, not just what appears in the statement.
Where exactly are the AIS and TIS on the portal?
Log in to incometax.gov.in and open the AIS section. Both the AIS and the TIS are available there to view or download. Form 26AS sits separately under the e-File menu and opens via the TRACES portal.
Why did I get an income-tax notice when I thought my return was correct?
The most common cause is a mismatch between your reported income and the data in your AIS — often an omitted interest, dividend or capital-gains entry. Reconciling against the AIS before filing, and submitting feedback on any genuinely wrong entries, sharply reduces this risk.
Bottom line: read Form 26AS for your tax credits, the AIS for the full picture of income reported about you, and the TIS for the summary that pre-fills your return. Reconcile your own records against all three, fix errors through AIS feedback, and you turn three confusing documents into a simple pre-filing checklist that keeps notices away.