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An assessee logs into the e-filing portal, opens the AIS module for AY 2026-27, and finds an information line — Rs 3.4 lakh of interest income from a bank branch the assessee cannot immediately place. The number is not on the ITR draft the tax consultant prepared. The 31 December 2026 Section 139(5) revised-return window is running, the reporting entity has a 45-day response cycle under the CBDT SOP, and Section 234B interest at 1 per cent per month is accruing the moment the shortfall crystallises. The question is not whether to act — the AIS line is a formal information asymmetry that the assessee must resolve before signing off the return. The question is how the AIS module accepts feedback, what the reporting entity does with it, which of six typical mismatch buckets the entry falls into, and — if the entry turns out to be real income — whether the correction goes through Section 139(5) or Section 139(8A).
Every unrecognised AIS line falls into one of six buckets. Bucket 1 — dormant savings-account or auto-renewed FD interest that the assessee stopped tracking and the bank continued reporting under Rule 114E code SFT-005. Bucket 2 — a mutual-fund SIP redemption where the AMC reported the securities transaction against the depositary participant's PAN feed and the assessee sees the entry as unfamiliar. Bucket 3 — a joint-property sale where the sub-registrar reported the SFT-012 entry against every joint holder's PAN in equal share regardless of the beneficial-ownership split. Bucket 4 — a crypto or virtual-digital-asset trade where the exchange reported the Section 194S TDS entry against a stale KYC PAN after the assessee updated the record. Bucket 5 — an insurance-policy maturity or bonus payout that the insurer reported under Section 194DA against the assessee's PAN even though the payout was ceded to a family assignee. Bucket 6 — a rate or amount misreport where the reporting entity captured the invoice or maturity value wrong at source. Each bucket has a different AIS feedback category — Information is denied, Information relates to other PAN or year, Information is duplicate, Wrong amount, and so on — and each has a different downstream: the misattribution buckets close on reporting-entity acknowledgement; the accepted-income buckets flow into a Section 139(5) revised return or a Section 139(8A) updated return depending on which window is open.
Access to the e-filing portal with the assessee PAN, the compliance-portal AIS module, and an offline AIS PDF and JSON download for line-level reconciliation. A working paper listing every AIS line by SFT code (SFT-005 for time-deposit interest, SFT-011 for credit-card payments, SFT-012 for property transactions, and the parallel TDS entries by Section) with a classification column for the six buckets and a feedback-submission-date column. A reference to the assessee's book position — the personal balance sheet, the mutual-fund folio, the property register, the insurance-policy summary — that the AIS entries are being reconciled against. A calendar tracking the Section 139(5) revised-return window (three months before the end of the relevant AY) and, for older years, the Section 139(8A) 48-month updated-return window with the escalating 25 / 50 / 60 / 70 per cent additional-tax loading zones marked. A follow-up register for feedback lines pending the 45-day reporting-entity response, escalated to a written letter to the reporting entity if the response window closes without action.
Every unrecognised AIS entry is classified into one of the six buckets, routed to the correct AIS feedback category, and either closed on reporting-entity acknowledgement or accepted into the ITR through the appropriate correction window. The TIS (Taxpayer Information Summary) that pre-fills the ITR draft ties to the assessee's book position with no rolling exception. Where a revised return under Section 139(5) is filed inside the AY, the Section 234B interest is settled alongside the incremental tax with no additional-tax loading. Where an updated return under Section 139(8A) is filed after the AY has closed, the additional-tax loading is calibrated to the 25 / 50 / 60 / 70 per cent band that applies. The AIS module shows every entry either as accepted, as corrected by the reporting entity, or as filed feedback awaiting response — no open information asymmetry carries into the following AY.
You logged into the e-filing portal at incometax.gov.in, opened the AIS tab for AY 2026-27, and scrolled down the information lines. Most of them tie to the pay-slip, the demat account, the two savings accounts you actually use. And then there is one line — Rs 3.4 lakh of interest income from a bank branch you cannot place. It is not on the ITR draft the consultant prepared last week. It is not on any of your bank statements you can put your hands on.
Where did it come from, and what do you actually do about it?
The quick answer
The AIS module carries a Feedback button against every information line. Seven feedback categories: Information is correct; Information is not fully correct; Information relates to other PAN or year; Information is duplicate or included in other information; Information is denied; Customised feedback; Information is not taxable. Choose the one that fits, submit, and the feedback flows to the reporting entity (bank, mutual fund, broker, sub-registrar) with a 45-day response window under the CBDT SOP.
If the reporting entity accepts the feedback, the AIS entry updates. If they reject it, the line stays as-is with the rebuttal on record. And if the AIS entry turns out to be real income you missed on your original ITR, a revised return under Section 139(5) inside the AY — or an updated return under Section 139(8A) after the AY has closed — is the correction route.
Six buckets explain most unrecognised entries. Walk each in order and the Rs 3.4 lakh line usually resolves inside forty minutes.
Bucket 1 — a dormant savings account or an auto-renewed FD
The single most common AIS surprise for a salaried assessee is interest reported under SFT-005 by a bank the assessee had forgotten about. Rule 114E requires every banking company, co-operative bank, and Post Office to report interest paid or accrued on time deposits of Rs 5,000 or more per person per financial year in Form 61A. The reporting is cumulative accrued interest, not receipt — a five-year FD paying interest quarterly reports the full year’s accrued interest to AIS every March even if the maturity payout is still four years away.
Two variants surface most often. The first — a salary account from a previous employer that the assessee stopped using but where the auto-swept FD kept renewing on maturity and paying out interest instalments the assessee never tracked. The second — a joint FD with a parent or spouse where the primary holder’s PAN is the one on the interest reporting even though the beneficial holding is shared.
Illustrative arithmetic on the Rs 3.4 lakh — Rs 2.1 lakh sits in bucket 1. A five-year FD taken out of a HDFC branch salary account seven years ago, auto-renewed twice, currently paying Rs 42,000 per quarter in accrued interest. The account is real and the interest is the assessee’s — it is genuinely forgotten income.
What to do. For the forgotten-deposit case, submit an Information is correct feedback and route the incremental income to a Section 139(5) revised return. For the joint-holder case, submit an Information relates to other PAN or year feedback specifying the primary-holder PAN, and the reporting entity should re-file the SFT-005 record against the correct PAN.
Bucket 2 — a mutual-fund SIP redemption or a broker capital-gain entry
Depositary participants and asset management companies report securities transactions to AIS through the SFT machinery and directly under Section 194 series TDS reporting. A SIP redemption from a folio the assessee holds through a specific broker will appear on AIS as a separate line — often with a value the assessee does not immediately recognise because the AIS reports the gross redemption proceeds rather than the net capital gain.
The mismatch is usually not the transaction itself but the amount frame. The assessee remembers Rs 40,000 of net capital gain from a debt-fund redemption; the AIS reports the Rs 3.8 lakh gross redemption proceeds under the STT reporting entity’s SFT feed.
Illustrative arithmetic — Rs 0.4 lakh of the Rs 3.4 lakh gap is a bucket 2 case. A debt fund redemption from a fifteen-year-old folio the assessee held through a defunct broker. Once the AIS entry is cross-referenced with the AMC’s Capital Gains Statement, the actual taxable capital gain is Rs 42,000, not the Rs 3.8 lakh gross proceeds the AIS line initially suggested.
What to do. Submit an Information is correct feedback if the transaction is genuine; the taxable-income line on the ITR should carry only the capital gain, not the gross proceeds. The AIS gross-proceeds line does not by itself increase the tax base — the capital-gain computation reconciles.
Bucket 3 — a joint-property sale reported against every joint holder
Sub-registrars report immovable property transactions of Rs 30 lakh or more under Rule 114E code SFT-012 in Form 61A. The reporting captures every joint holder’s PAN in equal share regardless of the beneficial-ownership split — a father-and-son joint holding on a property sold for Rs 60 lakh will show Rs 30 lakh of consideration on the father’s AIS and Rs 30 lakh on the son’s AIS even if the entire beneficial interest was the father’s.
This surfaces the moment an assessee sees a property-sale entry against their PAN on a property they did not think they owned. The most common case is a family co-holding arrangement — a property whose ownership title carries the assessee’s name for succession-planning reasons but where the assessee has no beneficial interest in the sale proceeds.
Illustrative arithmetic — Rs 0 of the Rs 3.4 lakh gap is bucket 3 in this walkthrough, but the property misattribution case is the highest-consequence bucket when it does surface, because a wrong acceptance can drag the assessee into an assessment on Rs 30 lakh or more of misattributed consideration.
What to do. Submit an Information relates to other PAN or year feedback with the primary-holder PAN and a copy of the co-holding declaration attached under the customised-feedback field. The sub-registrar acknowledges the correction; the entry updates to reflect the actual beneficial split; the ITR carries the assessee’s actual share.
Bucket 4 — a crypto or VDA exchange reporting against a stale PAN
Every VDA (Virtual Digital Asset) exchange under Section 194S deducts and reports TDS on every trade of a crypto asset from the assessee’s account. If the assessee updated the PAN on the exchange KYC after an initial sign-up with a different PAN (a common case where the initial sign-up used a father’s PAN and the assessee later updated to their own), the exchange’s historical trade records may continue reporting against the stale PAN until the exchange’s back-office reconciliation catches up.
The reciprocal case — a genuine VDA trade the assessee does not remember — is rare but appears occasionally where the assessee had a small trading account that was inactive for a stretch.
What to do. If the trade is genuine and the reporting is correct, an Information is correct feedback and inclusion in the ITR under Section 115BBH at 30 per cent. If the trade is genuine but reported against the wrong PAN — the assessee’s PAN when it belonged to the family member’s account — an Information is denied feedback with a written follow-up to the exchange’s compliance desk to correct the historical KYC-PAN mapping.
Bucket 5 — an insurance-policy maturity reported under Section 194DA
Life insurance companies report policy maturities and bonus payouts under Section 194DA against the policyholder’s PAN. The reporting captures the gross maturity proceeds even where the policyholder assigned the proceeds to a family beneficiary before maturity, or where the policy was assigned to a lending institution as security and the maturity discharged the pledge.
The mismatch surfaces when the assessee sees a Section 194DA entry for a policy they know matured but where the proceeds went to a third party.
Illustrative arithmetic — Rs 0.9 lakh of the Rs 3.4 lakh gap is a bucket 5 case. A twenty-year endowment policy that matured this year and paid out to the son as the assigned beneficiary; the AIS reports Rs 12 lakh of maturity proceeds against the father’s PAN as the policyholder.
What to do. Submit an Information relates to other PAN or year feedback with a copy of the assignment deed attached under the customised-feedback field. The insurer acknowledges the assignment; the entry updates against the son’s PAN; the father’s ITR carries no maturity proceeds.
Bucket 6 — a rate or amount misreport
The reporting entity captured the transaction value wrong at source. A vendor invoice of Rs 8.42 lakh reported as Rs 84.2 lakh on the SFT return; a bank’s cumulative interest calculation that misapplied the compounding frequency; an OTP-linked online purchase that was refunded but the refund did not update the SFT credit-card feed. These are pure reporting-entity errors and the correction is entirely on the reporting-entity side.
What to do. Submit an Information is not fully correct or Wrong amount feedback with the correct figure and a supporting document (the actual invoice, the actual bank statement) under the customised-feedback field. The reporting entity re-files the SFT record with the corrected figure inside the 45-day window.
Which correction route — Section 139(5) or Section 139(8A)
For AY 2026-27 (FY 2025-26), a revised return under Section 139(5) can be filed until 31 December 2026 or the completion of the assessment, whichever is earlier. The revised return replaces the original entirely; there is no additional-tax loading beyond the normal Section 234A, 234B, and 234C interest on the incremental tax.
Once the Section 139(5) window closes, the fall-back is an updated return under Section 139(8A). The window was extended from twenty-four months to forty-eight months by the Finance Act 2025, and the additional-tax loading escalates by tranche: 25 per cent of the aggregate of tax and interest if filed within twelve months of the end of the relevant AY; 50 per cent between twelve and twenty-four months; 60 per cent between twenty-four and thirty-six months; 70 per cent between thirty-six and forty-eight months.
The economics are asymmetric. On the illustrative Rs 3.4 lakh dormant-FD case at 30 per cent marginal rate — Rs 1,02,000 of underlying tax — a Section 139(5) revised return costs Rs 1,02,000 tax plus roughly Rs 22,440 of Section 234B interest plus Rs 3,000 or so of Section 234C, for a total of about Rs 1.28 lakh. The same correction routed through a Section 139(8A) updated return twenty-four months later costs the same Rs 1,02,000 tax plus roughly Rs 24,000 of Section 234B plus 50 per cent additional-tax loading of about Rs 63,000, for a total of about Rs 1.92 lakh. The reason interest shows on your TDS challan walkthrough covers the parallel case where a TDS-side interest surfaces on the deductor’s payment record — the interest surface is the same Section 220(2) mechanic.
The 45-day reporting-entity window and what to do while it runs
The AIS module timestamps every feedback submission and the CBDT SOP directs the reporting entity to respond within 45 days. The response takes one of three forms: the entity accepts the feedback and re-files the SFT record; the entity rejects the feedback with a rebuttal note; the entity does not respond and the feedback continues to sit as pending.
The response-window discipline matters because the ITR filing deadline does not wait. If the 45-day window is still running as the ITR due date approaches, the safer position is to file the ITR on the basis of the assessee’s book position (excluding the disputed AIS line if the assessee genuinely believes it is not their income), with a written note on the return explaining the pending AIS feedback. If the reporting entity later accepts the feedback, no further action is needed; if the reporting entity rejects the feedback, a revised return under Section 139(5) closes the gap.
The difference between Form 26AS and Form 168 walkthrough covers the neighbouring form that the AIS interacts with — Form 26AS retains its TDS-and-TCS-focused role even after the AIS launch, and Form 168 (the annual TDS statement introduced by the Income-tax Act 2025) is the deductor-side view of the same underlying data.
When the manual AIS reconciliation outgrows itself
For a salaried individual with one or two bank accounts, a mutual-fund folio, and one primary residence, the AIS reconciliation is a once-a-year self-service task that fits inside a Sunday afternoon before the ITR filing. Twenty to thirty information lines, six buckets to classify, one or two feedback submissions, done.
For a promoter or director with a personal PAN carrying multiple business relationships — director loans, related-party interest, insurance policies on the corporate books that vested to the individual, a family jointly held real-estate portfolio, and a discretionary trust — the individual AIS carries fifty to eighty entries a year and the reconciliation stops being once-a-year self-service and becomes a monthly discipline that the family office or finance manager holds.
Above that count, the running match between the individual’s AIS, the corporate books that generated the reporting entries against the promoter’s PAN, and the personal ITR draft becomes a first-class reconciliation output rather than an annual filing chore. Moving the AIS line reconciliation and the six-bucket classification queue onto continuously refreshed detection — where Terra Insight’s TDS reconciliation software treats the AIS mismatch queue and the Section 194 series deductor-side view as first-class outputs — is what keeps the promoter’s personal ITR filing inside a fifteen-day window rather than a four-week firefight.
Go deeper
- Form 26AS versus Form 168 — the AIS neighbour explained
- How to fix a wrong tax return already filed — the Section 139(5) and Section 139(8A) treatment
- Why is there interest showing on my TDS challan — the Section 234 series interest surface
- Form 168 as the new TDS annual statement — the deductor-side view of the same data
- TDS interest and penalty impact calculator — model the Section 234B running exposure
- TDS reconciliation software for India
Frequently Asked Questions
I do not recognise an entry on AIS. Where do I actually submit the feedback?
Log into the e-filing portal at incometax.gov.in with the assessee PAN, navigate to the Compliance Portal from the top menu (Services then AIS, or the compliance tile on the dashboard), open the AIS module for the relevant assessment year, and drill into the specific information line. Each line carries a Feedback button on the right — clicking it opens a dropdown with seven canonical options: Information is correct; Information is not fully correct; Information relates to other PAN or year; Information is duplicate or included in other information; Information is denied; Customised feedback; Information is not taxable. Choose the option that fits the case, add an explanation in the free-text field, and submit. The submitted feedback flows to the reporting entity (bank, mutual fund, broker, registrar) and, per the CBDT SOP, the reporting entity is expected to respond within 45 days. The updated AIS reflects the outcome — accepted feedback removes or corrects the line; rejected feedback leaves the line as-is with the reporting entity’s rebuttal on record.
The AIS entry is real income I simply missed on my ITR. What do I file — a revised return or an updated return?
If the assessment year is still open, file a revised return under Section 139(5) — the deadline is three months before the end of the relevant assessment year or before the completion of the assessment, whichever is earlier. For AY 2026-27 (FY 2025-26) that puts the Section 139(5) window running to 31 December 2026. The revised return replaces the original entirely with no additional-tax loading beyond the normal Section 234A, 234B, and 234C interest on the incremental tax. If the Section 139(5) window has closed, the fall-back is an updated return under Section 139(8A) — available for up to 48 months from the end of the relevant AY under the Finance Act 2025 extension — with an additional-tax loading of 25 per cent for filings within the first twelve months, escalating to 50 per cent, 60 per cent, and 70 per cent as the window ages. The same-year Section 139(5) route is materially cheaper than the multi-year Section 139(8A) route on any AIS entry the assessee accepts and pays tax on.
My AIS shows Rs 3.4 lakh of FD interest I never received. Is this a bank error or my own?
Roughly six times out of ten it is a bank-side reporting artefact — the branch reported cumulative accrued interest on a five-year FD to AIS under Rule 114E (SFT-005) even though the assessee is on a receipt-basis method and the actual credit will only land on maturity, or the branch reported the interest against the primary joint-holder PAN when the assessee is only a secondary holder. Roughly three times out of ten it is a genuine forgotten deposit — a dormant FD from an old salary account that renewed automatically and paid out an interest instalment the assessee did not track. Roughly one time out of ten it is a bank internal error — the interest was posted to the wrong PAN because the KYC record carries a stale PAN reference. The three cases have three different feedback outcomes on the AIS module: the joint-holder case takes an Information relates to other PAN or year feedback; the forgotten-deposit case takes an Information is correct feedback and drives a revised return; the wrong-PAN case takes an Information is denied feedback and typically requires a written follow-up to the bank branch as well.
How much interest under Section 234B am I actually looking at if I accept the AIS entry and file a revised return?
Section 234B runs at 1 per cent simple interest per month, from 1 April following the financial year to the date of assessment. On an illustrative Rs 3.4 lakh AIS FD interest entry at a 30 per cent marginal rate — Rs 1,02,000 of underlying tax — a revised return filed twenty-two months after 1 April of the following FY carries approximately Rs 22,440 of Section 234B interest (Rs 1,02,000 x 1 per cent x 22 months). Section 234C additional interest on the deferment of the individual advance-tax instalments during the year the income was originally earned can add another Rs 3,000 to Rs 4,000 depending on how many quarters the shortfall crossed. Section 234A interest on default in furnishing the return does not apply if the original return was filed on time. The TDS interest and penalty impact calculator models the exact running exposure for a given assessment-year and revised-return date pair.
When does the manual AIS reconciliation stop being an individual-taxpayer exercise?
For a salaried individual with one or two bank accounts, a mutual-fund folio, and a single primary residence, the AIS reconciliation is a once-a-year self-service task that fits inside a Sunday afternoon before the ITR filing. For a promoter or director with a personal PAN carrying multiple business relationships — director loans, related-party interest, insurance policies on the corporate books that vested to the individual, a family jointly held real-estate portfolio, and a discretionary trust — the individual AIS carries fifty to eighty entries a year and the reconciliation stops being once-a-year self-service and becomes a monthly discipline that the family office or finance manager holds. Above that count, the running match between the individual’s AIS, the corporate books that generated the reporting entries, and the personal ITR draft becomes a first-class reconciliation output rather than an annual filing chore — and the same six-bucket classification runs against every new AIS line as it lands.
Content authored by practitioners with experience at Amazon India, Intuit QuickBooks, and the Tata Group. Meet the team →
- ▸ Section 285BB, Income-tax Act 1961 — The prescribed income-tax authority or the person authorised by such authority shall upload in the registered account of the assessee an annual information statement in such form and manner, within such time and along with such information, which is in the possession of an income-tax authority, as may be prescribed. Introduced by the Finance Act 2020 with effect from 1 June 2020, Section 285BB is the statutory basis for the Annual Information Statement launched in November 2021 as the expanded successor to Form 26AS. The AIS captures over fifty categories of financial information — TDS and TCS entries, Statement of Financial Transactions filings by banks and registrars under Rule 114E, high-value transaction reports, securities transaction records from depositories, foreign remittance filings, and property and vehicle purchase reporting — all of which pre-fill into the Taxpayer Information Summary that seeds the ITR draft.
- ▸ Rule 114E, Income-tax Rules 1962 (Statement of Financial Transactions) — Every person who is liable for audit under Section 44AB, a banking company, a co-operative bank, a Post Office, a Nidhi, a non-banking financial company, a company or institution issuing bonds or debentures, a listed company issuing shares, a registrar or sub-registrar for property transactions, and any other specified person shall furnish a Statement of Financial Transactions in Form 61A. The prescribed thresholds include aggregate cash deposits of Rs 10 lakh or more in savings accounts of a person in a financial year, aggregate cash deposits of Rs 50 lakh or more in current accounts, aggregate credit-card payments of Rs 1 lakh in cash or Rs 10 lakh through any mode, interest paid or accrued on time deposits of Rs 5,000 or more per person per financial year, purchase or sale of immovable property valued at Rs 30 lakh or more, and cash payments of Rs 10 lakh or more for demand drafts or pay orders. Every Rule 114E filing surfaces on the recipient's AIS as a separate line — the SFT reporting-entity code (SFT-005 for time-deposit interest, SFT-011 for credit-card payments, SFT-012 for property transactions) is the traceable identifier behind every AIS entry.
- ▸ Section 139(5), Income-tax Act 1961 — If any person, having furnished a return under sub-section (1) or under sub-section (4), discovers any omission or any wrong statement therein, he may furnish a revised return at any time before three months prior to the end of the relevant assessment year or before the completion of the assessment, whichever is earlier. A revised return replaces the original filing entirely; the acknowledgement of the revised return supersedes the original acknowledgement for every downstream refund, intimation, or scrutiny reference. Where an AIS entry surfaces income the assessee did not disclose on the original ITR — the illustrative Rs 3.4 lakh dormant FD interest — the revised return under Section 139(5) is the primary correction route inside the assessment-year window.
- ▸ Section 139(8A), Income-tax Act 1961 (updated return, ITR-U) — Any person, whether or not he has furnished a return under sub-section (1), sub-section (4), or sub-section (5) for an assessment year, may furnish an updated return of his income or the income of any other person in respect of which he is assessable, for the previous year relevant to such assessment year, in the prescribed form, at any time within forty-eight months from the end of the relevant assessment year. The window was extended from twenty-four months to forty-eight months by the Finance Act 2025 with effect from 1 April 2025. An updated return under Section 139(8A) carries an additional tax liability of 25 per cent of the aggregate of tax and interest if filed within twelve months of the end of the relevant AY, 50 per cent between twelve and twenty-four months, 60 per cent between twenty-four and thirty-six months, and 70 per cent between thirty-six and forty-eight months — the escalating cost that makes the same-year Section 139(5) route materially cheaper than the multi-year Section 139(8A) route for any AIS entry the assessee wants to accept and pay tax on.
- ▸ Section 234B, Income-tax Act 1961 — Subject to the other provisions of this section, where, in any financial year, an assessee who is liable to pay advance tax under Section 208 has failed to pay such tax or, where the advance tax paid by such assessee under the provisions of Section 210 is less than ninety per cent of the assessed tax, the assessee shall be liable to pay simple interest at the rate of one per cent for every month or part of a month comprised in the period from the first day of April next following such financial year to the date of determination of total income under sub-section (1) of Section 143 or regularisation under Section 144. The Section 234B interest runs alongside Section 234C (deferment of individual advance-tax instalments) and Section 234A (default in furnishing the return), and it is the interest surface that crystallises the moment an AIS entry the assessee did not include in the original advance-tax computation is accepted through the revised or updated return.