The process of claiming income tax refund has been tweaked a little bit by the tax department. From this year, you will have to pre-validate the bank account in which you wish to receive your income tax refund once your return is successfully filed or when filing your income tax return (ITR).

Apart from pre-validating your bank account, you are also required to link your PAN with your bank account. If your PAN is not linked with the bank account, then you will not be able to get the tax refund in your bank account.

Abhishek Soni, CEO & founder, Tax2win.in, a tax-filing website says, "If you want to claim the refund in the ITR then make sure you link your PAN with your bank account and pre-validate it on the income tax e-filing website. Now onwards, the income tax department will issue only e-refunds. Thus, refunds will be credited only to those bank accounts which are linked with PAN."

The income tax department had previously announced that from March 1, 2019, it will issue only e-refunds. These tax refunds will be credited only to those bank accounts which are linked with PAN and are also pre-validated on the income tax e-filing website, i.e., www.incometaxefiling.gov.in.

If your PAN is not linked/registered with your bank account, then you are required to visit your bank branch to do the same. Archit Gupta, CEO & founder, Cleartax.com says, "The department will now only issue e-refunds to taxpayers and in order to ensure proper credit and trail, the department is asking taxpayers to pre-validate their bank accounts on the income tax portal. This is a one-time exercise and is simple enough to do."

Step 2: After logging in, click on 'Profile Settings' tab in your account and then select 'Prevalidate your bank account' option.

Step 3: If any of your bank account/s is already pre-validated, it will be shown on the screen. If you don't have a pre-validated account or you if you want to receive the income tax refund in different bank account, then click on 'Add'.

Step 4: A new page will open and you will have to enter these details: bank account number, account type, IFSC, bank name, bank branch and your mobile number and email ID.

The mobile number and email ID to be provided here must be the same as mentioned in your bank records.

Step 5: Click on 'Pre-validate'. Once clicked, this message will appear on your screen: "Your request for pre-validating bank account is submitted. Status of your request will be sent to your registered email id and mobile number".

Alternatively, you can also check whether your bank account has been pre-validated or not by logging in to your account on the e-filing website under the 'Profile settings' option.

If you wish to remove a particular bank account from your e-filing account, then in the 'Prevalidate your bank account' option under the 'Profile Settings' tab, select the account you want to remove and click on 'Remove' option.

If you want to view the list of bank accounts where pre-validation has failed, then you can do the same by clicking, 'View Failed/removed bank accounts'. It will also show you all the details of the bank account and the reason for rejection or removal.