Income Tax Refund data: Taxpayers get back Rs 64,700 crore in 2019!

The Income Tax department issued Rs 64,700 crore worth refunds in the current fiscal between April 1-June 18, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said today. In the full 2018-19 fiscal the amount released was over Rs 1.61 lakh crore, she said in a written reply to a question in the Lok Sabha. According to Sitharaman, over 6.49 crore electronic returns were submitted for Assessment Year 2018-19 (financial year 2017-18), which was 18.65 per cent more from the 5.47 crore in the assessment year 2017-18.

"The government has accorded high priority to issue refunds for all taxpayers including small taxpayers. Less than 0.5 per cent of income tax returns (ITRs) are selected for scrutiny, the majority of ITRs are processed expeditiously and refunds are issued," Sitharaman said.

The Finance Minister further said that the increased use of technology has resulted in reducing the time taken to process the ITRs filed by taxpayers. 

In the current financial, ITRs amounting to Rs 64,700 crore have already been issued till June 18, 2019. 

In FY 2018-19, the Income Tax department sent 26.9 crore SMS and emails to taxpayers in a bid to remind them to file their ITRs on time.

The Union Government had approved integrated e-filing and Centralised Processing Centre (CPC) 2.0 project of the I-T department in January this year to process returns in a timely manner, the minister said. The project envisaged pre-filing of ITRs by the I-T department to improve the accuracy of the information contained in the return and reduce the time taken to process returns and issue refunds.

Sitharaman will present her first Union budget as the Finance Minister on July 5. The Halwa ceremony, which  marks the commencement of Budget printing process, was held in New Delhi on Saturday.