Pending Income tax Refunds may got postponed to next year

Pro­cess­ing, deter­mi­na­tion, issuance and encash­ment of income-tax refund claims is a con­tin­u­ous process and there­fore a part of the out­stand­ing refunds would in the nor­mal course also get post­poned to next year, Min­is­ter of State for Finance Jayant Sin­ha said.

Income tax refunds to the tune of over Rs 1.19 lakh crore is pend­ing for the last three fis­cals, start­ing 2012–13.  Income-tax refunds amount­ing to Rs 1,19,964.13 crore relat­ing to last three assess­ment years are pend­ing as on March 5, 2015.

An amount of Rs 1,06,499 crore has already been refund­ed to the tax­pay­ers in the cur­rent finan­cial year till March 7, 2015, which is 32.1 per cent high­er than the amount refund­ed dur­ing the cor­re­spond­ing peri­od of last finan­cial year and is 17.02 per cent of the gross direct tax collections.