An income tax refund is received by the taxpayers when the taxes paid are higher than the actual tax liabilities. Taxpayers file their income tax return (ITR) claiming refund of tax on account of excessive deduction of tax at source or payment of advance tax or self-assessment tax.

For the financial year 2019-20 (the assessment year 2020-21), taxpayers can file ITR by December 31, 2020, and claim a refund.

After filing ITR, it is vital to see how much time it takes to get the refund in the bank account.

According to Sandeep Sehgal, Director, Taxes and Regulatory, AKM Global, a consulting firm, there is no timeline prescribed for the issue of refunds.

“However, since the last few years, we have observed that the process has generally become quicker and we have seen cases where refunds have been issued within days of the filing of return. In cases where the return filed may have some errors or picked for assessment by the IT department, the refunds may get take longer till the completion of assessment or resolution of errors,” Sehgal explains.

For this particular year, even otherwise, however, some delays should be expected, as Sehgal says, due to disruption caused due to COVID-19 as the processing of returns may get a longer time.

There could be various reasons for not getting the tax refund on time including inaccurate information uploads, incomplete filing, wrong bank transactions, among others.

There are chances that the taxpayer did not furnish the correct bank account number or other bank details while filing the income tax return (ITR). Or there may be a need for additional documentation.

Further, the taxpayers are allowed interest at 6 percent per annum for every month after the due date of filing of return.

Taxpayers can check the refund status online on the official website of Income Tax—incometaxindia.gov.in by clicking on the “Status of Tax Refunds" tab. A message will pop up, giving the mode of payment, a reference number, status and date of refund.

According to ClearTax, an income tax e-filing portal, the delay could also be at 2 levels: the I-T department may be taking time to process the request or the I-T department has already processed but there is a delay at the bank’s end.