Winning Bizness Desk

Mumbai: The Revenue Department is working on expediting the processing and payment of tax refunds and reducing the period from 16 days to 10 days. It is expected that the new timeline will be implemented in the ongoing financial year. A government official said, “In the financial year 2022-23, the processing of tax returns took an average of 16 to 17 days. At the same time, in the previous financial year 2021-22, this time period was 26 days. Now we are working on reducing the processing time of tax returns to 10 days and refunds simultaneously."

Refunds of Rs 72,215 cr issued so far

Notably, during this financial year, between April 1 and August 21, refunds worth Rs 72,215 crore have been issued so far which includes refund of Rs 37,775 crore to corporate and Rs 34,406 crore to individual taxpayers. Direct tax collection after refunds has been Rs 5.88 lakh crore. Gross collections from direct taxes, which include both personal income tax and corporation tax, have been Rs 6.6 lakh crore. The Department of Revenue is using advanced technology to speed up the system, ensuring speedy processing of tax returns and issuing refunds expeditiously without delay.

Assessment becoming faster

There was a significant increase in the percentage of tax returns processed in the assessment year 2022-23 over the previous financial year. The official said that going by the current sentiment, in this financial year, we are expecting further improvement in processing time and this will reduce the time taken to issue refunds. The official said that almost all scrutiny and assessment related to returns is done electronically and cases are selected for scrutiny without any physical face-to-face interaction between the taxpayer and the tax officials.

Returns & refund to be done simultaneously !

The department is of the view that processing of returns and refund should be done simultaneously. The official said that we are trying to issue refunds as soon as the process of tax returns is completed. The department is considering such upgradation in the system, so that refund is done within 24 hours. The above-mentioned official said, “The goal is ambitious, but not impossible. We have issued refunds in 3 to 4 working days in at least 10 to 12 per cent return cases. We are confident that this will become the norm in the next few years.