The Income Tax Department processed as many as 2.10 crore tax refund cases, returning back over Rs 1.46 lakh crore in first eight months of 2019-20, up 20 percent over the last year as a centralized processing centre has expedited the process, officials said.
The Centralised Processing Centre (CPC) processed 4.70 crore tax returns between April 2019 and 28 November (almost eight months of current 2019-20 year) as opposed to 3.91 crore returns being processed in the same period a year back, they said.
It processed 2.10 crore tax refund cases for current Assessment Year 2019-20 as on 28 November 2019, compared to 1.75 crore refunds for the same period in FY 2018-19, an increase of 20 percent.
The total amount of refunds issued in FY 2019-20 till 28 November was Rs 1.46 lakh crore as compared to Rs 1.19 lakh crore in the same period of the previous year (an increase of 22.7 per cent), they said.
Of the 2.10-crore refunds processed in 2019-20, 68 per cent of refunds were issued within 30 days from the date of the e-verification of income tax return as compared to 57 per cent for the same period in FY 2018-19.
All refunds issued by CPC have been directly credited to the taxpayers' bank accounts by ECS, eliminating paper cheque and ensuring faster, accurate and safer credit, officials said.
The number of verified refunds pending as on 29 November are 20.76 lakh and currently being processed.
Officials said not only were 20 percent higher number of refunds processed for the current FY2019-20, the pendency of refunds for verified income tax returns (ITR) has been reduced by 36 percent from 31.97 lakh last year at the same time to 20.76 lakh this year as on November 29.
Balance refunds are being processed, they said.
The department has issued several reminders to taxpayers to e-verify their ITRs so that any ITR with refund claims can be taken up for processing.
As many as 22.3 lakh refunds failed during the past years have been proactively reissued in the current year.
The refunds previously failed due to address not found, bank account closed among other reasons.
The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) expects that these measures will facilitate the taxpayer towards better voluntary compliance and improve their confidence in the tax administration, they added.
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