IT department may launch drive to process Income Tax Refunds quickly

The Income Tax Department is considering organizing campaigns to assist the taxpayers, apart from proactively pursuing other means to process the refunds due to 3.5 million cases of tax refunds being held up.

The processing of the IT refunds was not effortless when the process used to happen offline. To ease the process, the department switched to issuing returns through electronic way in 2011.

However, tax officials say different information regarding the bank account and Permanent Account Number (PAN) details of taxpayers delay the refunds.

Beginning of this month, during an interaction Central Board of Direct Taxes’ Chairman Nitin Gupta had said that the department was “in correspondence” with such taxpayers, whose refunds are stuck. We want to credit the refunds to the correct bank accounts of the taxpayers quickly, further, he added.

About a year back, the department started a unique demand management facilitation system for all such cases where refunds are held up due to various reasons. An email is triggered to the taxpayer saying they will get a call after three days from a particular number and following this conversation, the issues are being resolved.

A call center based in Mysuru is resolving cases of tax refunds. More than 140,000 cases of refunds through the call center were resolved in the Financial Year 2023.

Meanwhile, for non-residents, who do not have bank accounts in India, the refund cannot be processed to a foreign bank account. For such taxpayers, an alternative should be given where in tax refund can be credited, experts say.

The Income tax department has issued refunds worth Rs 1.5 trillion in the current financial year till Oct 9. In FY 23, the Income Tax Department issued refunds worth Rs 3.07 trillion.