30 June 2022
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),
11 July 2022
The Annual Information Statement (AIS) is basically a utility/form that is available on the Income Tax website that reveals all of the taxpayer's financial and tax-related information. It is an extension of Form 26AS, which contains information on SFT and taxes deducted throughout the year. The new AIS now includes information such as interest, securities transactions, mutual fund transactions, dividends, foreign remittance information etc. It has been introduced with the purpose of removing duplicate information if any. If the taxpayer thinks that the information shown in the form is duplicate, incorrect, relates to another year, or if there is any fallacy, then the taxpayer will be able to submit their feedback. In the AIS, the reported value and the value following feedback will be displayed separately. The primary goals of AIS are to display the entire information to the taxpayer; encourage voluntary compliance and facilitate smooth return prefiling; and deter non-compliance. Apart from the online format, the ITD has made an AIS Utility available for taxpayers to help them provide feedback to the tax department offline as well. Taxpayers would be able to download AIS in PDF, JSON, and CSV formats from the website. Components of AIS There are broadly two components of AIS viz., TIS and AIS. While AIS contains comprehensive data related to TDS, bank interest, foreign remittances, mutual funds, etc., on the other hand, TIS gives a summary of this information. It simply means that the aggregated value is displayed to the taxpayer for ease of filing tax returns. TIS and AIS are almost similar with just one exception. TIS will only show a summary of the transactions shown in AIS, whereas AIS will contain a detailed statement of the transactions. Now, AIS is further divided into two parts, Part A & Part B. Part A includes information such as DOB, PAN, mobile number, address, and other details. Part B includes details relating to, but not limited to, specified financial transactions, payment of tax, outward forward remittance, TDS, and interest on refunds. The Difference between AIS and Form 26AS Whilst Form 26 AS only mentions high-value transactions and tax deducted at source, the AIS includes full data of savings bank interest, interest on deposits, capital gains, foreign remittances, and share transactions. It is important to note that AIS shows only that information that is available to the income tax department. The transactions that are not available with them shall be reported by the taxpayer accurately to avoid any penalties or notices. AIS would make it much easier to file an Income Tax Return (ITR) by consolidating more details than Form 26AS. It is to be noted that Form 26AS on the portal will continue to exist till the new AIS is completely operational.