Taxpayers should check their AIS on income tax portal every quarter. Here’s why

At an event, Joint Secretary in the finance ministry Kamlesh Varshney said, “You must keep on checking your AIS not only at the time of return filing but quarterly. You should check your AIS and (report) if anything wrong is reported so that the other person who is wrongly claiming some kind of benefit should be caught,” reported PTI.

Varshney added that AIS has played an important role in ensuring voluntary compliance as it provides details of all financial transactions to assesses while filing their income tax returns (ITR).

He also gave an example such as the tax officer said many people submitted a false declaration to their employer regarding house rent paid to claim HRA deductions. According to him, these declarations would also be visible on the AIS of the person to whose account the rent amount has been credited.

Thereby, he advised taxpayers to review their AIS every quarter, and in case of any discrepancy — they should submit feedback immediately so that the other person who is wrongly claiming some kind of benefit can be caught.

As per the Income Tax website, the Annual Information Statement (AIS) is a comprehensive view of information for a taxpayer displayed in Form 26AS. A taxpayer can provide feedback on the information displayed in AIS. AIS shows both reported value and modified value (i.e. value after considering taxpayer feedback) under each section (i.e. TDS, SFT, Other information).

The object of AIS is to display complete information to the taxpayer with a facility to capture online feedback, while also promoting voluntary compliance and enabling seamless prefilling of returns.

Notably, AIS is an extension of Form 26AS.

While form 26AS displays information about property purchases, high-value investments, and TDS/TCS transactions carried out during the financial year. However, AIS also additionally includes details of savings account interest, dividends, rent received, purchase and sale transactions of securities/immovable properties, foreign remittances, interest on deposits, GST turnover, etc.

Here’s how you can view your AIS.

Step 1: Login to the Income Tax website — www.incometax.gov.in

Step 2: Click on “Annual Information Statement (AIS)” under “Services” tab from the e-filing portal after successful login on the e-filing portal.

Step 3: Click on the AIS tab, on the homepage.

Step 4: Select the relevant FY and click on the AIS tile to view the Annual Information Statement.

The information on AIS is divided into two parts. Firstly, general information includes details like PAN number, Aadhaar number, name, mobile number, date of birth, etc. The second would be TDS/TCS information.