In a rare surprise from the tax department, lakhs of taxpayers across the country have received refunds much ahead of their expectations.

The IT department had refunded Rs72,000 crore, mostly pertaining to cases of assessment year 2009-10 but also a substantial numbers pertaining to year 2010-11, according to chairman of the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) Sudhir Chandra.

Chandra was interacting with newspersons on the sidelines of the valedictory function of the 63 rd batch of Indian Revenue Service (IRS) officers passing from the National Academy of Direct Taxes (NADT) in Nagpur.

According to Chandra, it was for the first time since independence that the income tax department had received refunds in the month of March itself. In the normal course
refunds pertaining to 2009-10 would have been received in the middle of this financial year.

Refunds for the year 2010-11 are not expected before April 2012. Currently the target is to complete almost all the pending refunds by 20April, 2011, according to Chandra.

"It was earlier planned to pay even the returns for 2010-11 by April 1. The target could not be met, so the deadline has been extended to April 20," he said. The focus would now be on refunding in the same financial year.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is expected to save an estimated Rs4,400 crore in interest payout in the current year with advancing of tax refunds and clearing the backlog.

"We will save Rs4,400 crore in the current year for preparing the refunds and clearing the backlog of the refunds," chairman CBDT Sudhir Chandra said.

He added that for the assessment year 2010-11, CBDT had already made refunds for 5.4 lakh accounts between 1April and 10 April, 2011 with the backlog of some 5-6 lakh to be cleared by 20 April.

Chandra added that in 2009-10, CBDT had refunded a record amount of Rs72,000 crore as the board had decided to initiate the Direct Tax Code era from April 2012 with a clean slate.