Your AIS, 26AS and Form 16 Don't Match? Fix It Before You File, Not After the Notice

It happens in almost every salary file I open. The Form 16 from the employer says one figure, Form 26AS says a smaller one, and the AIS shows interest and share sales the employee had half forgotten. Three documents, three stories, one return to file. Do not panic, and do not file on any one document blindly. A mismatch is usually a clerical error sitting in somebody else's filing — and it is far cheaper to fix this month than to explain it after a notice.

First, know what each document actually is

Most confusion starts here, because the three statements overlap without being copies of each other.

So the documents answer different questions. Form 16 tells you what your employer says it paid and deducted. Form 26AS tells you what tax credit the department's system has actually recorded against your PAN. The AIS tells you everything reporting entities have told the department about your money. When they disagree, at least one of those three tellings is wrong — your job is to find which, before the return freezes your version into the record.

Why the numbers disagree: the usual causes

• The deductor filed late, or has not filed yet. Your employer or bank deducted the tax and paid it over, but the quarterly TDS return that carries your name was filed after you downloaded your 26AS. The credit lands later. Timing, not theft — but it looks identical on paper.
• Your PAN was entered wrongly in the TDS return. One wrong character and the credit sits under a wrong or invalid PAN, visible to nobody. Your Form 16 can be perfect while 26AS shows nothing.
• The challan or the section was mapped wrongly. The money reached the government, but the deposit details in the statement do not match, so the entry stays unmatched and the credit does not attach to you.
• The AIS shows gross figures; your return needs the income figure. A bank reports the full interest it paid or accrued. Your taxable figure may be lower — interest spread across years, or a joint fixed deposit where only your share is yours. The AIS is reporting a transaction. It is not computing your income.
• Sale value is not profit. For shares and mutual funds, the AIS shows the sale consideration. Your income is the gain — sale value minus cost. A ₹9 lakh redemption in the AIS might be a ₹60,000 gain in the return. That gap is correct, and it still needs to be explainable at a glance.
• The same income arrives twice. Interest can reach the AIS through both the TDS return and a specified-transaction report. One income, two lines, and a total that looks doubled.
• Joint names. Interest or sale proceeds on a jointly held account or property often appear in full against the first holder's PAN, even where the income belongs to both.

Fix route one: the deductor corrects the TDS return

Here is the rule that saves weeks: you cannot edit Form 26AS. Neither can I, and neither can the portal helpdesk. The entries in 26AS are born in the deductor's TDS return, and they change only when the deductor files a correction statement on TRACES — correcting the PAN, the challan details, the deductee row or the salary details, as the error requires. Once that correction is processed, the updated record flows into Form 16 Part A and into 26AS.

So if your salary TDS is short in 26AS, go to your employer with specifics, in writing: the quarter, the amount deducted as per your salary slips and Form 16, and the amount actually appearing in 26AS. Ask for the correction statement and, after it is processed, a revised Form 16 Part A. Do the same with a bank or any other deductor whose entry is wrong. An email with figures gets action. A phone call gets forgotten. (That is practice, learned the hard way — keep the paper trail.)

Fix route two: answer the AIS entry with feedback

The AIS carries its own repair tool, and it is genuinely useful. Open the statement from the e-filing portal — Services, then Annual Information Statement — pick the entry that is wrong, and use the feedback option against that transaction. The portal offers these responses, in its own words:

• Information is correct
• Information is not fully correct
• Information relates to other PAN/Year
• Information is duplicate / included in other information
• Information is denied
• Customised feedback for the category — which, for income entries, includes marking that the income is not taxable

Use "not fully correct" where the transaction is yours but the amount is not — a joint deposit where half the interest is your spouse's, for instance — and enter the correct figure. Use "duplicate" where the same interest has been reported twice. Use "denied" only where the transaction truly never happened; it is a serious marker, not a dustbin for entries you dislike. For select categories, your feedback is sent to the reporting source for confirmation, and you can watch the source's response on the portal. The Taxpayer Information Summary is then updated taking the feedback and the response into account.

Be clear about the boundary, though. AIS feedback answers the AIS. It does not rewrite a TDS credit. If the error lives in the deductor's return, route one is the only road — feedback is not a substitute.

Reconciling salary: the fifteen-minute check

For a salaried person, run this exact comparison before filing. Take the total TDS in Part A of Form 16. Find the matching entries in 26AS under your employer's TAN, across all four quarters. Those two totals should agree to the rupee. Then compare the salary figure in Part B of Form 16 with the salary information in the AIS, which is fed by the salary details in the employer's TDS return. If Part A and 26AS disagree, the employer's TDS return is where the fault sits. If Part B and the AIS disagree, somebody has typed a salary figure wrongly — and again, the employer corrects it at source. Think of the three documents as three clerks copying from the same salary register into three different rooms: when two copies match and one does not, you have found your clerk.

If the deadline reaches you first

Sometimes the correction is filed but not yet processed when the due date arrives. File on the correct figures — your real income, fully offered. Claim TDS credit only to the extent it stands in 26AS; a claim with no matching entry will not be matched when the return is processed, and the shortfall can surface as a demand or a reduced refund. Do not drop real income from the return merely because a statement is incomplete, and do not quietly accept an AIS figure you know is wrong. Offer the income correctly, keep the deductor's reply and your AIS feedback acknowledgements with the file, and claim the balance credit once the corrected 26AS is live, through the routes the portal then offers. (Keeping both versions of the documents with a short reconciliation note is practice, not law — and it is the practice that ends enquiries quickly.)

You will read on the internet that the CPC simply adds any income seen in 26AS or Form 16 to your total at processing, under Section 143(1)(a). Read the statute before you fear it — or rely on it. That adjustment, clause (vi), carries a proviso: no adjustment under it is to be made for a return furnished for an assessment year beginning on or after 1 April 2018. It cannot be used on your current return. Do not take comfort from that. A mismatch you leave behind still sits in the department's data, matched against your PAN, ready to be asked about — and Section 143(1) adjustments that do apply cannot be made without an intimation and a chance to respond within 30 days, which means correspondence, deadlines and a paper trail you could have avoided in an afternoon.

The sequence is simple. Reconcile first. Push the deductor for a TRACES correction where the TDS return is wrong, answer the AIS where the AIS is wrong, and only then file — on figures you can defend line by line. If your own reconciliation is throwing up more questions than answers, this is precisely the check our income tax return filing team runs before anything is submitted, because a mismatch fixed in July is a chore, and the same mismatch answered in December is a case.