Income Tax payer? I-T Dept wants you to do this online now

For the benefit of income tax payers in the country, the Income-Tax Department has introduced the new Annual Information Statement (AIS) on the compliance portal, which includes features for taxpayers to get a simplified and comprehensive view of information and the facility to provide feedback online on their portal. The new AIS includes additional data on interest, dividends, securities and mutual fund transactions, as well as foreign remittances, among other information. Additionally, the reported information has been processed to remove duplicate information.

The Income-Tax department shared the announcement on Twitter, "Income Tax Department rolls out the new Annual Information Statement (AIS) on the Compliance Portal. It provides a comprehensive view of information to taxpayers, with the facility to capture online feedback (sic)."

In the new AIS, taxpayers have the option to provide the online feedback if the information is revealed to be inaccurate, in terms of person, year or duplication of the data. The reported value by the taxpayer and value after the feedback will be shown in the AIS separately. “Taxpayers will be able to download AIS information in PDF, JSON, CSV formats," press release of the I-T Department mentioned.

Additionally, AIS provides a simplified Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) to individual taxpayers, showing the simplified aggregated values of filing returns. The submitted feedback by taxpayers on AIS will automatically be updated in real time in TIS, which will be used for pre-filing of return, which will be used in a phased manner.

AIS is a more comprehensive single reference document in comparison to Form 26AS, as it can be updated by taxpayers if the information is inaccurate. However, the Income Tax department clarified that Form 26AS will be available on the TRACES portal until the new AIS is fully operational. It suggests that AIS will completely replace the Form 26AS in the future.

The taxpayers can access the Annual Information Statement while clicking on the link ‘AIS’ under the ‘Service’ tab on the income tax portal - incometax.gov.in. 

You can refer to the AIS handbook or user guide, which is provided in the "Resources" section of the website or can connect with the helpdesk through the "Help" section on the AIS Homepage.