Tax Talk: Detailed Annual Information Statement makes filing income tax return easier

financialexpress.com:

Promoting compliance and ensuring accurate reporting have long been the key challenges in implementing tax laws. However, leveraging technology, the Income Tax Department has taken a significant stride towards addressing these issues through the introduction of the Annual Information Statement (AIS), a powerful tax transparency tool.

The AIS serves as an extension of Form 26AS, which traditionally provided details of property purchases, high-value investments, and TDS/TCS transactions for a given financial year. Expanding on this functionality, the AIS now encompasses additional information such as savings account interest, dividends, rent received, purchase and sale transactions of securities or immovable properties, foreign remittances, interest on deposits, GST turnover, and more. Most importantly, it empowers taxpayers by giving them the option to dispute any transaction that may have been reported in the AIS erroneously.

The information presented in the AIS is categorised into two parts. Part A offers general information regarding the taxpayer, including their PAN, masked Aadhaar number, name, date of birth/incorporation/formation, mobile number, email address, and taxpayer’s address. Part B, on the other hand, provides detailed information about income, TDS and specified transactions.

Transaction-level details

One of the key benefits of the AIS is its ability to provide transaction-level details for the amounts that are pre-filled in the taxpayer’s income tax return (ITR). For instance, the taxpayer can now reconcile the total dividend income amount pre-filled in their income tax return with the help of the individual transaction-level details of dividends received during the financial year. This simplifies the