India pulls 3 years of foreign bank data into AIS for resident tax filers

India's tax department has begun pulling foreign bank balances, dividends, salary credits and capital gains straight into the Annual Information Statement for calendar years 2022 through 2024, giving assessing officers a three-year backfile of cross-border data before the next filing cycle.

The CBDT order and what feeds into AIS

The Central Board of Direct Taxes signed off on the automation July 8, authorizing the Director General of Income-tax (Systems) to upload information received under sections 90 and 90A tax treaties directly into AIS, Form 26AS and the new Form 168 under the Income-tax Act, 2025. A parallel Foreign Assets Information (FAI) report now sits on the Compliance Portal, downloadable as a PDF with a feedback channel keyed to each Transaction Sequence Number.

The data flowing in comes from Common Reporting Standard exchanges and covers foreign bank account balances and identifiers, interest and dividend income, salary paid abroad, holdings in shares, mutual funds and ETFs, capital gains and insurance, annuity and pension contracts. CBDT set a 90-day window from July 8 to clear the 2022 through 2024 backlog, targeting early October for completion.

What it costs Indians abroad and returning expats

For Non-Resident Indians whose status under section 6 holds, the appearance of a foreign account in AIS creates no new tax bill. The exposure sits with Resident and Ordinarily Resident filers, who must declare global income and every foreign asset in Schedule FA and Schedule FSI.

The sharper cost lands on returning expats and long-haul nomads who trip India's day-count test and flip to ROR. An undisclosed foreign account carries penalties under the Black Money Act of 10 lakh rupees (about $12,000) per undisclosed asset per year, plus tax at 30% on the underlying income and a further 90% penalty on that tax. A single overlooked brokerage account held across the 2022, 2023 and 2024 windows now visible to the department can compound to roughly 30 lakh rupees (about $36,000) in fixed penalties alone, before any tax or interest.

Anyone weighing a move back should pull their AIS and FAI report before filing and reconcile every line, since the department is already matching CRS feeds against Schedule FA entries. The residency day-count math behind that flip is covered in the India guide.