The income-tax department has notified I-T return (ITR) forms for assessment year 2026-27 (AY27) or financial year 2025-26 (FY26) and enabled Excel Utility for the ITR-1 (Sahaj) and ITR-4 (Sugam) forms online. This means that taxpayers can now prepare their returns offline before digitally uploading the same.
However, if you are a salaried taxpayer, it may be more prudent to wait till 15 June before your file your returns, in order to avoid potential mismatches between your important financial documents — your Form 16 ( statement) and Form 26AS (annual information statement).
What is Form 16, Form 16A, Form 26AS?
Form 16: This is provided by your employer and details your salary payments, income , and scheme contributions for the financial year.
Form 16A: This is provided by you bank or financial institution, detailing TDS on non-salary payments such as interest earned or dividend income.
Form 26AS: Generated by the income-tax department, Form 26AS (Form 168 under the new ITA 2025) or (AIS), is a comprehensive display of your financial statement for the year.
Notably, Form 26AS includes details from your Form 16, Form 16A and other information advance tax / self-assessment tax / regular assessment tax deposited, any specified financial transactions (SFT), transactions, information relating to demand and refund and information relating to pending and completed proceedings, refund received during a financial year (if any), Tax Collected at Source (TCS), Tax Deducted at Source (TDS), TDS defaults (if any), and tax deducted on sale of immovable property under section 194 IA (in case of seller of such property), savings bank account interest, property transactions, goods and services tax sales, purchases and securities transactions, and more.
Why should TDS statement, Form 26AS details match?
It is very important to ensure that all details on your TDS statements (Form 16 and 16A) and / AIS match before you complete your income-tax returns so as to ensure smooth filing and refund process.
This is because , employers and other reporting entities (AMCs, mutual fund houses, brokers) have time till 31 May to update information in these forms, and it takes at least seven to 10 days after this, for the updated information to be included in your Form 26AS / AIS.
Notably, since the AIS contains information on high-value transactions done via credit card and all PAN-affiliated financial transactions, anything you forget or fail to report in your returns will show on the document regardless. It is this mismatch that the tax department can ask you to correct.
This means that filing your before the documents are fully updated can lead to a situation where your returns show a mismatch in forms and could trigger a notice from the tax department.
Checklist before filing ITR:
- Reconcile AIS, Form 26AS, Form 16, and bank statements
- Verify all credits carefully
- Match capital gains with broker reports
- Check carry-forward losses from earlier years
- Review deductions claimed under Chapter VI-A
- Verify exempt disclosures
- Ensure foreign asset disclosures are complete where applicable
- Validate bank account details for refund purposes
- Review turnover and GST reconciliation for businesses/professionals
- Keep supporting documentation ready in case of future queries
To avoid mismatch, you can use the pre-fill service on the e-filing portal for your . This service automatically fills in data captured by your PAN. According to Clear Tax, when Form 26AS is not up to date, taxpayers cannot use the pre-fill facility, which gives you an indication that you may need to wait some more.
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