Form 26AS — the tax credit statement that governs your refund
Form 26AS is the Income Tax Department's own record of every rupee of tax credited against your PAN — TDS deducted by employers and banks, TCS collected, advance tax and self-assessment tax you paid, and refunds already issued. The operative rule is simple and unforgiving: if a credit does not appear in 26AS, you cannot claim it.
At a glance
- What it shows
- TDS, TCS, advance tax, self-assessment tax, refunds
- Where to get it
- incometax.gov.in, under e-File → Income Tax Returns → View Form 26AS
- Governing rule
- No entry in 26AS means no credit claimable
- Updated
- As deductors file their quarterly TDS returns
Why a credit goes missing
Almost always because the deductor made an error. The commonest is a wrong PAN — one digit out and the credit lands against a stranger's account or nobody's. Next commonest is a quarterly TDS return filed late, so the credit simply has not appeared yet. Third is tax deducted but never deposited.
All three are fixed by the deductor filing a correction statement. None of them can be fixed by you, and none of them can be argued around in the return. Which is why 26AS should be checked in April, when there is time to chase, rather than in July.
Timing differences that are not errors
A credit can be genuinely yours and still sit in the wrong year. Tax deducted in March and deposited in April frequently appears against the following year. The remedy is not to claim it twice but to carry the credit forward, which the return provides for.
Check 26AS in April, not in July, because the only person who can fix it is someone else
Every common defect in Form 26AS is the deductor's to correct — a wrong PAN, a late quarterly return, tax deducted but not deposited. You cannot correct any of them yourself, and the department will not accept a claim for credit that its own records do not show. A former employer chased in April will usually file a correction. The same employer chased on 28 July will not do it in time, and you will file without the credit and wait months for a rectification. The check takes five minutes and the window for fixing what it finds is three months wide.
Questions we get asked
My employer deducted TDS but it is not in 26AS.
The employer has not deposited it or has reported it against the wrong PAN. Ask them to file a correction statement. Until that is done the credit is not claimable, however clear your payslip is.
Is 26AS the same as AIS?
No. 26AS is a tax credit statement. AIS is much broader — it reports your financial transactions, including many that carry no tax deduction at all.
How far back does 26AS go?
Several years are available on the portal, which is useful when reconciling an old notice or preparing an updated return.
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