Income Tax Refund: Centre Plans To Reduce Refund Processing Time To 10 Days

The income tax department is planning to reduce the average processing time for getting income tax refunds from the current 16 days to 10 days and is expected to be implemented during the current fiscal year, as per a report by Business Standard.

“We have been receiving several queries for refund status and therefore this will be a good move to expedite the payout to taxpayers who have a refund due after e-filing. A large number of taxpayers filed in time and therefore there is an expectation for refunds to be processed sooner," Archit Gupta, Founder and CEO, Cleartax, was quoted as saying by Livemint.

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According to experts, income tax refund does not come immediately but is issued only after the details of taxes already paid are verified by the income tax department from the information available with it.

“Normally, it takes 20-45 days for the refund to reach you after filing and verifying your ITR. However, this FY 2022-23, the tax department has expedited the processing of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) using advanced technology. As a result, the average processing time has been impressively reduced to only 16 days," said Abhishek Soni, CEO and Co-founder of Tax2win,” Abhishek Soni, CEO and Co-founder of Tax2win, was quoted as saying by Livemint.

The total number of ITRs for AY 2023-24 filed till 31st July, 2023 was more than 6.77 crore, which was 16.1% more than the total ITRs for AY 2022-23 (5.83 crore) filed till 31st July 2022.