Income Tax: What does Annual Information Statement (AIS) mean to you?

what is ais

As of now we have 26AS statement which primarily provides details of taxes deducted/collected from your income as well as taxes paid by you directly. It contains details of the income tax refund along with the interest paid to you on such refunds. Now the government intends to expand the scope of details that will be available to the taxpayer which will help the taxpayer to file his income tax return more accurately. It is with the aim of better compliance by the taxpayers that the government has introduced AIS. AIS is nothing but a description of the financial transactions collected by the tax department on the basis of PAN by the tax department by various entities.

AIS has two components. One is the Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) and the other is the proper AIS which details the information contained in the TIS.

What details are available in your AIS

A general impression is being created that the details of all your financial transactions are available with the government and all those transactions will be reflected in AIS, which is not true.

In addition to the details currently available to you in Form No. 26AS, AIS has details of all transactions that are reported by certain entities under Annual Statement of Financial Transactions, which they are required to submit to the tax department. Is. These entities include banks, registration offices, regional transport offices, authorized dealers dealing in foreign exchange, stock exchanges, mutual funds, companies issuing shares and debentures, RBI and all taxpayers who are entitled to deduct and collect tax at source. are liable for. The transactions to be reported include the details of various income received by you like dividend, interest, rent, professional fee etc. Similarly, transactions are also received for purchase and sale/redemption of shares and units of mutual funds beyond certain limits in aggregate during the year. informed of. It also includes purchase of registered property of more than thirty lakh rupees. This further includes transactions with banks such as depositing cash, purchase of drafts, payment of credit card dues, fixed deposits, etc.

There are reports that your savings bank account interest details will also be available under AIS, which I doubt as banks and post offices are currently not required to furnish savings bank interest details to the Income Tax Department as there is no tax for this. did not need to. Will be deducted unless you are a non-resident, where banks also deduct tax on savings account interest.

Please note that your details will appear in AIS only if the total amount of transactions in that category and with that entity exceeds the prescribed limit.

what do you want to do?

If you find that some of the transactions that are reflected in AIS are not yours, you have the option to report such transactions online and AIS will do that while retaining the original information with the value reported by you. modified to an extent. If you are investing in mutual funds jointly, the value of mutual fund transactions reported in your AIS will be higher as the mutual fund is required to report the value of the transaction against the names of all the holders and to the extent it There is repetition. of data. In such a case you need not worry as such difference is understandable. However, if a transaction is of the type you have not entered into, report such inaccuracy online to protect your interests.

AIS. way ahead in

Uploading AIS to your account is part of “Project Insight” under which the Income Tax Department seeks to check tax evasion and use artificial intelligence to detect cases of tax evasion. In future, the Income Tax Department may also ask various entities to report. Details of cash transactions done with them. For example, the department may ask online sellers such as Amazon and Flipkart to report details of cash transactions above certain limits even if the PAN number of the buyers is not available with them. Based on the address and name the Income Tax Department will be able to track such transactions in your PAN and will include such transactions in your AIS. So those who deal with black money need not worry and honest taxpayers have nothing to worry about.

Once the AIS system is stabilized, the Income Tax Department may discontinue Form No 26AS as the details currently available in 26AS are already included in AIS.

Balwant Jain is a Tax and Investment Specialist and can be contacted at jainbalwant@gmail.com and @jainbalwant on Twitter.