Income Tax: After ITR is filed, when can you expect the refund to be credited? Check details

Today is the last date to file income tax return. Over 6.69 crore returns have already been filed, shows the I-T portal data as on Sept 14. Total returns that are verified now stand at 6.03 crore and number of verified return processed are over 4 crore, the data further reveals.

Last year, total filed returns stood at 7.28 crore. So one can expect a large number of tax returns to be filed on Monday while the tax experts and tax filers continue to struggle with a sluggish e-filing portal.

But if you have already filed your income tax return (ITR), and waiting for the refund, it is important to know these points.

ITR refund: How long it takes to get the refund?

I. If everything is in order, you may get the refund in a short period of time – say in a few days. There are some instances when taxpayers received refund within a few days.

"The average time for receiving an income tax refund depends on the internal checks carried out under section 143(1). In some cases, smaller refunds are issued on the same day, while in others, they are received within 7 to 10 days of filing the ITR. However, due to new checks introduced this year on deductions and exemptions, some delays in processing may be expected where such claims have been made,” says O.P. Yadav, Tax Evangelist, Prosperr and Former Principal Commissioner (Income-Tax).

II. Although there is no rule of thumb, but some taxpayers who had a small amount pending got their due within 4 weeks.

III. Typically, it may take a month or so for the refund to be credited when there is a long queue of pending applications and when there are too many complications in the return.

“When the return has several complications such as capital gains and business income, the tax refund may get delayed because the department also tends to cross verify the information,” says Chirag Chauhan, a Mumbai based chartered accountant and founder of CA Chauhan & company.

“In few cases, it can get processed within an hour when the amount is less than ₹15,000 and the refund gets credited to the bank account the same day,” he adds.

IV. The delay should not bother you since the income tax department gives interest on refund at the rate of 6 percent per annum starting April 1.

Given the complaints over sluggish website, taxpayers and CAs were expecting the last date to get an extension, but there is no such update so far. There was a fake news circulating on Sunday regarding the extension but the I-T department flagged it and clarified that no such extension has been given.

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