If you have filed your ITR and verified it, you should periodically check the status of income tax return. You can know if the ITR has been accepted and processed.

The status of an income tax return or ITR can be checked once the return has been filed and verified. Taxpayers should regularly check the status of their income tax return to ensure that the ITR has been accepted and processed. “If your return is filed properly and processed by the department, the status reflected in your account will be ‘ITR processed’,” says Naveen Wadhwa, DGM of Taxmann. However, if some discrepancies are found or some changes are proposed by Centralized Processing Centre (CPC), Bengaluru, there can be different return status such as defective return or case transferred to assessing officer.”

The taxpayer can provide a suitable reply to the income tax department with respect to the status pending in the account so as to avoid any complications in the future, he adds.

What are the different types of ITR status?

Submitted and pending for e-verification: This status is shown when you have filed the ITR but either have not e-verified it or have manually verified it and sent the acknowledgement to the department but the same has not been received by the department yet.

Successfully e-verified: If the status of your return shows the status as successfully e-verified, it means that you have submitted and duly verified your return. But the ITR has not been processed yet.

Processed: If the status of your return shows ‘processed’, it means that the return is successfully processed by the department without any discrepancies.

Defective: The status of an ITR shows ‘defective’ if it hasn’t been filed in accordance with provisions of the law. “If your return is found defective then you will receive a notice of defective return under section 139(9) asking you to rectify the defect within 15 days from the date of receiving notice. If you don’t respond to a defective return then ITR shall be treated as invalid,” says Wadhwa.

Case transferred to Assessing Officer: ‘Case transferred to AO’ means the Centralized Processing Centre of the Income Tax Department has transferred the ITR to the jurisdictional assessing officer to process it. “CPC generally transfers only those cases to the assessing officer which may involve complexities that could not be processed without any human intervention and thus require the assessing officer to step in,” says Wadhwa.

If your case has been transferred to the jurisdictional assessing officer, says Wadhwa, then just wait for a communication from the officer. “The assessing officer may contact you via telephone, email, letter or SMS and he may ask you to provide necessary evidence in support of your claim or assertions to process the return,” he says.

If the income tax department finds any discrepancies between the income declared, the tax paid and the data available, an intimation shall be issued to the taxpayer to explain the discrepancy. If a demand is raised on a taxpayer, he can agree with it and pay the additional tax and interest or he can disagree with the demand and file the revised return or rectification request with the department, says Wadhwa.