Form 26AS reconciliation

Import the client's Form 26AS and compare it with the books. The reconciliation sits beside the report rather than inside it: nothing here fills a clause, and a report can be generated without ever opening it.

Importing a statement

Open the report's Form 26AS tab, beside Clauses at the top of every tax audit page, and choose Import 26AS. Import the statement as TRACES provides it — a PDF or a text file. Once one is in, the TDS step of the wizard also links to it.

Password

A TRACES download usually opens with the taxpayer's date of birth as DDMMYYYY. It is used once to open the file and is not stored.

Client and year

Taken from the report. The statement's own PAN and financial year are checked against it, and a statement belonging to another taxpayer or another year is refused rather than reconciled.

Re-importing a corrected statement, with Replace statement, replaces the figures and keeps every decision you have made.

Two sides, two questions

A 26AS answers two quite different questions, and the screen keeps them apart.

PART-I and PART-VI — what was deducted from the client

Tax their customers withheld. Reconciled against the books.

PART X — what the client got wrong as a deductor

The department's own processing of the statements the client filed. Compared with clause 34(c).

Reconciling the credits

Nothing in 26AS identifies a Tally ledger: a statement names a deductor by TAN, and a ledger master carries at most a PAN. So the comparison is in two steps.

1. Which ledgers hold TDS. Tick them once. TDS Receivable and Advance to Supplier can sit under the same group and a keyword cannot tell one from the other, so this is asked rather than guessed.
2. Which ledger each deductor is. Candidates are proposed by name and by the party's legal name; you confirm. A mapping is kept for every later year.

Each deductor is then compared for the year as a whole — totals against totals. No credit is paired to a voucher: within one deductor and one section the same amount recurs, and the statement's dates are the deductor's rather than yours, so a row-level pairing would pair the wrong ones and still foot.

Record a verdict against anything that differs: an unexplained difference, one you have explained, or one that was never a difference.

Clause 16 — amounts not credited to the P&L

Where a deductor says they paid the client more than the books account for, that may be income that never reached the profit and loss account — or a timing difference, a wrong PAN quoted by the deductor, or a receipt that is exempt or capital.

So a question is raised beside clause 16, on the Income & Adjustments step, once both are true:

• PART-I shows more tax than the books do for that deductor, or the deductor is not identified in the books at all; and
• you have recorded that difference as a real one on the reconciliation.

The prompt shows what the deductor says they paid, the tax on both sides, and the individual credits behind it. Answer it as a clause 16 item or not, with a note.

PART-VI never raises a clause 16 question. It is tax collected from the client on a purchase, so the amount behind it is an outgoing, not income.

PART X — clauses 34(b) and 34(c)

PART X lists defaults the department raised against the client as a deductor, per TAN and per year: short payment, short deduction, two kinds of interest, a late filing fee under s.234E, and interest under s.220(2).

Interest — compared

The two interest columns are the interest clause 34(c) asks about. They are compared with what you have entered in 34(c) for that TAN.

Late filing fee — evidence for 34(b)

A fee under s.234E is levied only where a statement was furnished late. PART X does not say which form, when it was due or when it was filed, so no figure or date is proposed for 34(b).

Short payment and short deduction — context

These bear on clause 34(a) and are shown without being compared.

Amount paid and date of payment

Not in PART X at all. Clause 34(c) still needs both from you.

A default for an earlier year is shown and marked, not compared: that year's interest belongs to that year's report.

Record what you concluded — reflected in 34(c), disputed or under rectification, or not a 34(c) item — with a note.

What it does not do

• It fills no clause and blocks no report.
• It reads nothing from AIS. Advance tax, self-assessment tax, SFT transactions and GSTR-3B turnover are in AIS, not in 26AS.
• It cannot complete clause 34(a). A 26AS is the statement of one PAN, and tax the client deducted appears in their deductees' statements, not in their own.