Refunds: I-T dept asks taxpayers to send online response for AY 20-21

The Income Tax Department has urged taxpayers to "quickly" send an online response so that their pending refunds for assessment year 2020-21 can be processed expeditiously.

In an official statement issued on Sunday, it said that till date, 93 per cent of the refund claims in ITRs (Income Tax Returns) filed for assessment year (AY) 20-21 have "already" been processed.

"In the past week, refunds of over Rs 15,269 crore have been issued which will be credited to taxpayers shortly," it said.

The statement said that in order to "resolve" pending refunds of assessment year 2020-21, the department is in the process of communicating with taxpayers, where response from taxpayers would be required in cases involving notices "for prima facie adjustments, defects, adjustment under section 245 and refund failure due to bank account mismatch."

"The department requests taxpayers to respond online quickly, so that ITRs in such cases of AY 20-21 can be processed expeditiously," it said.

The statement said the tax department "has also commenced processing of ITRs 1 and 4 for AY 2021-22 and refunds, if any, will be issued directly to the bank account of the taxpayer."

"For financial year 2021-22, the Income Tax Department has issued refunds of over Rs 51,531 crore upto August 23," it added.

This included Rs 14,835 crore of income tax refund in 21,70,134 cases and corporate tax refunds of Rs 36,696 crore in 1,28,870 cases.

During the last year financial year of 2020-21, refunds of Rs 2.62 lakh crore (which is an increase of over 42 per cent over FY 19-20) were issued to over 2.37 crore taxpayers.

"It may be noted that this included the refunds expedited in a series of measures providing relief to taxpayers during the pandemic," the department said.