Filing
Reading Form 16, AIS and Form 26AS before you file
What each of the three tax documents shows, how to reconcile them, and what to do when they disagree.
By Aditya Kulkarni4 min read
Most filing mistakes are not maths mistakes. They are missing-information mistakes: interest that never made it into the return, a second employer forgotten, TDS credit left unclaimed. Three documents exist to prevent exactly this — Form 16, Form 26AS and the Annual Information Statement (AIS). Spending half an hour with them before you file for FY 2025-26 (AY 2026-27) is the cheapest insurance you can buy against a notice.
Form 16: your employer’s version
Form 16 is the TDS certificate your employer must issue by 15 June after the financial year ends. It has two parts.
- Part A lists your PAN, the employer’s TAN and the tax deducted and deposited each quarter.
- Part B is the salary computation: gross salary, exempt allowances, the standard deduction, deductions you declared, the regime used and the tax worked out.
Treat Part B as a draft, not a verdict. It only reflects what you told your employer. If you switched regimes, have rent receipts you never submitted, or changed jobs mid-year, your final numbers will differ. If you had two employers, you will have two Form 16s, and each one usually applies the basic exemption and standard deduction as if it were your only job — so the combined TDS is often too low.
If you have non-salary TDS — on FD interest, professional fees or rent — the deductor issues Form 16A each quarter instead.
Form 26AS: the tax credit ledger
Form 26AS is the department’s record of tax deposited against your PAN: TDS by employers, banks and clients, TCS, and any advance or self-assessment tax you paid yourself. It is the document that decides how much credit you get.
The key check: every rupee of TDS you plan to claim should appear in 26AS. If a client says they deducted ₹15,000 under 194J but 26AS shows nothing, the deductor has probably not filed their TDS return or quoted the wrong PAN. Ask them to correct it — you cannot claim credit that is not there.
AIS and TIS: the full picture
The Annual Information Statement goes much further than 26AS. Alongside TDS, it shows information reported to the department by banks, registrars, mutual funds and others: savings and FD interest, dividends, share and fund sales, large cash deposits, property purchases and more. The Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) condenses AIS into category totals, and the pre-filled return draws heavily on it.
If AIS shows something, assume the department knows about it.
A worked reconciliation
Anjali, a salaried designer, downloads all three in June 2026. Her Form 16 shows salary of ₹11,40,000 and TDS of ₹38,000. Her draft return includes only that salary.
Her AIS shows two more items: FD interest of ₹62,000 from her bank and savings interest of ₹6,500. Her 26AS shows the employer’s ₹38,000 plus ₹6,200 TDS deducted by the bank on the FD (10% of ₹62,000).
If she files from Form 16 alone, she under-reports ₹68,500 of income and forgets ₹6,200 of credit. The return would likely be flagged for the mismatch, and she would lose credit she was owed. The fix is simple: add both interest items under “income from other sources” and claim the full ₹44,200 of TDS.
When AIS is wrong
AIS is not infallible. Common errors include duplicated entries, a sale reported at the wrong value, or a transaction that belongs to someone else with a similar PAN. You can submit feedback on each entry in AIS on the e-filing portal — marking it as incorrect, duplicate, or belonging to another person, for instance. The reporting entity may then be asked to confirm or correct it.
Feedback does not change your return automatically. Report the correct figure in your ITR, keep proof of why the AIS entry is wrong, and record your feedback so you have a trail if a query arrives later.
Your pre-filing routine
- Download Form 16 (and Form 16A, if any) and keep them with your records.
- Download Form 26AS and AIS from the e-filing portal.
- Match every TDS entry in 26AS to income you are reporting.
- Go through AIS line by line: interest, dividends, sales, rent.
- Give feedback on wrong entries; correct your return, not the other way round.
- Re-check after a few weeks — late TDS filings by deductors can add entries.
Doing this before you click submit is far easier than responding to a mismatch notice afterwards.
General information, not tax advice. Rules change, so check the latest rules or speak to a CA before you act.