Income Tax Refund: Income tax refund arises in a situation when you have basically paid the taxes to the income tax department (ex: in the form of TDS deducted) more than your tax liability.
How to claim?
In order to claim your refund, the basic condition is that you need to file your Income Tax Return (ITR) before the due date of filing for the relevant assessment year. For instance if you want to claim refund for AY 2017-18, you must have filed your income tax return on or before August 5, 2017 (Last date of filing of ITR for individuals). The due date for filing of return if you own a business/company is October 31, 2017. Thus, if you have filed your return before these due dates, only then you have the right to claim the refund due to you if any.
While filing your income tax return, you can actually see the amount of refund due to you will be shown in the Taxes Paid and Verification column as shown below.
Once you have submitted the Income Tax Return, the return will then be processed by the Income Tax Department. If your claim for refund is accepted by the department upon processing your return, a direct credit to your bank account will be made if you have given the correct bank account details. An intimation under section 143(1) of the Income Tax Act will be sent to you once the department has processed your return. The entire process may take up to 1-6 months from the date of your filing of income tax return.
Check the status of income tax refund online:
You can check the status of your income tax refund from this link https://tin.tin.nsdl.com/oltas/refundstatuslogin.html. Open the link, enter your PAN and Assessment Year (AY) for which you want to check the refund status. Click ‘Submit’.
This will show the current status of your refund claim with the Income Tax Department.
If the refund has already been credited to your account you will the following reply:
Depending upon the processing of your income tax return and refund claim by the department, you may get one of the following statuses as well:
1. Refund expired 2. Refund returned 3. Refund processed through direct credit mode but failed 4. Refund paid 5. Refund adjusted against outstanding demand 6. Refund processed through NECS/NEFT Mode.
You may refer to this page for detailed explanation of the above refund statues and what needs to be done in each such case.
Make sure that you are giving the correct bank account details, IFSC code, MICR code, account number etc., while filing your income tax return so that you get your refund due directly to your bank account without any glitch.