The income tax return or ITR status can be checked online through the income tax department’s website. Tax refund, if due, is paid when the ITR is processed and the claim of the taxpayer is accepted.

Except assessees from Kerala, the deadline for filing income tax returns (ITRs) for financial year 2017-18 or assessment year 2018-19 ended on 31 August. Make sure that you verify the ITR; otherwise, it will not be processed. The verification can be done either online or offline. A taxpayer can do it within 120 days of filing the return. In case of failure to do the verification, the ITR will be considered invalid. If you want to do the ITR verification through the offline method, you have to download ITR-V (acknowledgement form), sign it and send it to the income tax department’s Centralized Processing Centre (CPC) in Bengaluru. The ITR-V can be downloaded from your e-filing account.

You can also e-verify the return through online banking or by generating a one-time password through Aadhaar.

You should regularly check the status of the ITR to know whether it has been accepted and processed. If the return has been processed by the income tax department, the status reflected in your tax filing account will show as ‘ITR processed’.

How to check the status of your ITR on the income tax e-filing website:

1) The ITR return status can be checked through the income tax department’s e-filing website.

2) From the list on the left side of the page, select ‘ITR Status’.

A snapshot of Income Tax Department’s e-filing website
A snapshot of Income Tax Department’s e-filing website
3) Fill in the PAN and acknowledgement number of ITR filed.

The status of only e-filed ITRs can only be accessed.
The status of only e-filed ITRs can only be accessed.
You can also check the ITR status by logging into the tax department’s website.

1. Log into income tax department’s e-filing website and then click on Dashboard

3. Select View Return/Forms option.

4. From the drop down menu, select Income Tax Returns and the relevant assessment year.

If the status is shown as ‘submitted and pending for verification’ this means that you have filed the ITR but not verified it.

If the status of your return shows ‘successfully verified’, it means that you have submitted and duly verified your return. But the ITR has not been processed yet. If the status of your return shows ‘processed’, it means that the return is successfully processed by the department without any discrepancies. Typically, after a return is processed , an intimation is sent under Section 143(1) of the Income Tax Act, 1961. In most cases it’s just an intimation stating that the return has been successfully processed. Tax refund is paid when the ITR is processed and the claim of the taxpayer is accepted by the department.

In case there is a discrepancy in the ITR, the tax department may declare a return ‘defective’ on account of incomplete or inconsistent information.

In some cases, the Centralized Processing Centre of the Income Tax Department may transfer the ITR to a assessing officer to process it. The CPC generally transfers only those cases to the assessing officer which may involve complexities and require the assessing officer to step in, say tax experts.