Finance Secretary Ajay Bhushan Pandey  said that the income tax refund of about ₹ 1,27,000 crore has been sent to bank accounts of individuals and businesses in this financial year. “We are monitoring the progress of the quick refunds system weekly and release refunds data in public domain. This helps us build trust between the taxpayers and the I-T department besides facilitating liquidity to the taxpayers,” Mr Pandey said.

“This financial year from 1st April to 27th October the I-T department have been able to issue refunds worth ₹ 1,26,909 crore to more than 39.14 lakh taxpayers. Out of which ₹ 34,532 crore were issued as refunds to Individual taxpayers in about 37.22 lakh cases while ₹ 92,376 crore were issued as refunds to 1,92,409 in Corporate tax cases,” he added.

According to the Department of Revenue under the Ministry of Finance, this has been done to ensure that business get liquidity in this difficult time.

“Another important aspect is that the Income-Tax Department has now a fully automated system of refunds payment directly going into the bank accounts of the taxpayers without any manual interface or intervention,” it said.

The Finance Secretary said that this is a quick refunds payment system which is fully automated and completely transparent.

“The income tax department has created a DBT (Direct Benefit Transfer) like architecture to execute quick refunds transfer directly into the bank account of the assessee in a seamless manner and at a larger scale,” he said.

“It is through this quick refunds process that the income tax department in the last few months has been able to issue refunds online in a huge manner directly into the bank account of the taxpayers to facilitate liquidity during the trying times of Covid-19,” Mr Pandey said.