How To Check Income Tax Refund Status?

It may well be the case that after filing your income tax return for the financial year 2018-19 (assessment year 2019-20), you may be waiting for the excess income tax paid by you to be processed and verified by the department and paid back to you as income tax refund.

The tracking or checking of the refund claimed by you is not a tedious task and is rather simple.

When does the refund claim becomes due

The taxpayer is eligible to claim income tax refund when he or she has paid more taxes to the government in comparison to their actual tax liability. And such a case arises when the TDS of the taxpayer or other taxes such as advance or self-assessment tax are higher than actual tax liability of the person concerned.

TDS or tax deduction at source rules as per the Indian Income Tax Act differs on the basis of nature of income such as salary, rent, commission etc. Also, there is a difference as to whether while making a deposit in the financial institution, you have provided the permanent account number (PAN) or not. For, depositors who have furnished their PAN, TDS @ 10% is deducted whereas for others you have not provide their furnished, a higher TDS amount at the rate of 20% is deducted.

Also, on the interest amount earned on savings as well as deposits over Rs. 10,000 in a financial year, banks are liable to deduct TDS. From this financial year, senior citizens have been granted a rebate as TDS liability will arise on interest of over Rs. 50,000 on such deposits.

Refund claiming process

The amount of refund due to you is auto-calculated on the basis of details furnished after you fill in the applicable ITR form completely and click on the validate button provided on the ' taxes paid and verification sheet'.

Nonetheless, it is the amount claimed by you and after due verification of the ITR filed by you, the department may process the exact amount or less as per its discretion.

Process to check the status

Now in a case, when the department determines that excess tax is paid by you over and above your actual tax liability, you will receive an intimation u/s 143 (1) of the Income Tax Act over e-mail and SMS. The intimation specifies the refund amount payable to you by the dept plus the refund sequence number.

And now that you have filed ITR by providing PAN, you can check the refund status using two ways:

1. On the income tax e-filing portal: Following steps need to be followed:

1. Visit income tax e-filing website
2. Log in into your e-filing account by providing PAN, password, date of birth and captcha code.
3. Click on 'View Returns/Forms'
4. After you choose the Income tax returns link from the drop down menu, select the assessment year for which you wish to check the refund status.
5. In the hyperlink, you then need to select the ITR acknowledgment number
6. Thereafter a pop-up will show which will detail all the facts such as the time of filing the ITR, the date when it was duly verified by the department and date of refund issue etc.
7. Also, details in respect of the cancellation of the refund, if the case may be will also be put and in case of issuance of refund, the mode of payment will be highlighted.

2. On the NSDL or TIN website: In most cases, the refund status is highlighted on the website after 10 days time from the date when the dept. sends the refund amount to the bank.

Herein on the site you need to reach the link providing the income tax refund status on the site. Simultaneously you need to provide PAN and assessment year for which the refund needs to be checked. Later for the validation, captcha shown has to be entered and hereafter depending on the refund status, message will flash that can be from refund status -expired to processed etc.

Terms related to income tax refund status

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