The Income Tax Department has saved a potential interest out-go of up to Rs 4,000 crore by an early pay-out of refunds to tax-payers in the month of April, a top Department official said on Wednesday.

"In the month of April, we have issued more than 20 lakh refunds all over the country which is a record number of refunds issued in April," Central Board of Direct Taxes Chairman, Sudhir Chandra, told reporters.

By doing so, the department has saved Rs 4,000-crore.

"The refund would have been (otherwise) issued in March 2012," he said. According to a recent report, in absolute terms, the refunds worked out to Rs 20,000-crore.

Chandra said the Department has already finished over 90% of the work on refunds and is targeting to finish it by June third week.

In another good news for salaried tax-payers, Chandra said the Department will formally notify the budget announcement of no tax returns to be filed for individuals earning up to Rs 5 lakh by June.

"In cases where the TDS (Tax Deducted at Source) is already done, we already have all the relevant information with us. Why should we ask him (tax-payer) to come to us again?" he said.

Chandra declined to give a specific answer when asked if the department is considering to raise more demands after a favourable ruling it got in the Vodafone case wherein the British telecom major was asked to pay USD 1.7-billion as tax.

When asked if such demands by the Department would dent Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) flows into the country, he said, "I don''t agree with it."