As the income tax filing season begins, salaried employees must carefully review all their transactions for the financial year 2025-26 (FY26) to ensure compliance with tax laws. Filing ITR requires understanding your income sources, applicable tax regime and eligibility for deductions.
For this, salaried employees are provided with two critical tools that can help them assess their financial transactions for the tax period. These are Annual Information Statement (AIS) and Form 26AS, critical tools for verifying financial transactions and Tax Deducted at Source (TDS). These ensure that your ITR matches the data that the government already has, preventing discrepancies or tax notices.
What are AIS And Form26AS?
The AIS is a detailed record issued by the Income Tax Department showing a taxpayer's financial transactions, including salary, TDS, bank interest, dividends and stock market investments for a financial year.
Form 26AS is a consolidated tax statement linked to a taxpayer's Permanent Account Number (PAN). It contains details of TDS, TCS, advance tax, self-assessment tax, tax refunds, and high-value financial transactions such as mutual fund investments, property purchases, and stock market trades.
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What Should Taxpayers Check?
For salaried taxpayers and non-audit cases, the ITR filing deadline for FY 2025-26 is July 31, 2026. To avoid tax notices or refund delays, taxpayers must ensure that the details of these forms do not mismatch in ITR.
As a result, while looking at their AIS, taxpayers should check details such as salary and pension income, bank interest, TDS details, dividend income, stock and mutual fund transactions, rental income, foreign remittances, tax refunds and PAN information. Taxpayers should also review Specified Financial Transactions (SFT), GST-related information, and tax payments made through challans.
Similarly, one must carefully review that their Form26AS provides details such as TDS on salary and bank interest, TCS, advance and self-assessment tax payments, tax refunds, and high-value transactions including shares, mutual funds, and property sales, among other things.
If taxpayers notice discrepancies, duplicate entries or incorrect information in these forms, they can submit feedback through the income tax portal.
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