NEW DELHI: All those who have filed their income tax return (ITR) already and paid more tax than what was due are eligible to get a refund. Although you might not have paid advance tax to the government, yet when you earn income from salary or bank interest, etc, tax might have already been deducted at source (TDS). Now after filing the ITR, if you find that more tax was deducted than what was actually due, you can claim a tax refund.

Once you have filed your ITR, verified it, income tax refund will automatically become due if excess tax was deducted.

Once the ITR is processed by the income tax department and the tax refund claim is accepted, the due amount is credited directly into the taxpayer's bank account. However, to get tax refund it is important that your bank account is linked with PAN card as the income tax department is now doing away with the old practice of sending tax refund cheques by Speed Post.

Checking the status of your income tax refund is also easy. You can simply log in to the income tax department's e-filing website with your user id and password. You need to then click on 'View Returns and Forms' on the display page. From the drop-down menu, go to select 'Income Tax Returns' and then select the last assessment year after which the tax refund status will be shown to you.

Just in case if the I-T website shows a “refund paid" status and the money has not been credited to your bank account, then you may either contact your bank or SBI that processeses all refund claims. You can also contact the income tax department.

Last month, finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman had said the Income Tax department issued ₹64,700 crore worth refunds till June 18 in the current fiscal year. She had also said the government has accorded high priority to issue refunds for all taxpayers including small taxpayers.

In the interim budget 2019, the then finance minister Piyush Goyal had announced that tax assessment will be done within 24 hours and those who aren’t under scrutiny will get income tax refunds within the day itself.