ITR Filing AY 2025-26, ITR Refund Processing Time: When will you get a refund for filing income tax return in April? Know what is the rule, here are every details…
ITR Refund Processing Time: The new financial year has started from 1 April 2025. And with this, taxpayers now want to know when they can file their Income Tax Return (ITR) for the assessment year 2025-26. Let us tell you that for this, first of all it is necessary that the Income Tax Department has to issue ITR forms for the current assessment year.
Last year i.e. in April 2024, 7 different ITR forms were issued. It is expected that the tax department will soon make ITR forms available so that income tax return filing can be ensured from this month itself.
CA Dr. Suresh Surana says that usually these utilities are released in different phases from the beginning of April. But the actual filing, especially forms like ITR-1 and ITR-2, are released when these utilities are operational on the income tax portal.
Let us tell you that most salaried employees wait for when their company will issue Form 16 required to file annual tax return. However, this document is not mandatory for ITR filing. Taxpayers can access other available documents to know their taxable income and exact tax liability.
According to Surana, Form 16 is an important document issued by a company which contains information about the salary given to the employee in a financial year and tax deducted at source (TDS). He says that with the help of this Form 16, taxpayers get help in preparing and verifying their income tax return as they get all the information about income and tax deduction in one place.
Which document should be used instead of Form 16 for ITR filing?
Let us tell you that with Form 16, the process of return filing becomes very easy, but it is not necessary. Salaried individuals can file their returns even without this form as they have sufficient documents like salary slip, Form 26AS, Annual Information Statement (AIS) and Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS).
When will income tax return filing start?
As we mentioned at the beginning of the article that the return forms are being prepared and you will be able to file ITR only after forms like ITR-1 and ITR-2 are available online on the tax portal. Usually these utilities are released in the second week of April. That is, taxpayers may have to wait a bit now.
Will ITR refund come in 7 days?
Now the question is that if a taxpayer files a return in April itself, will he get a refund within 7 days? Let us tell you that the Finance Ministry and the Income Tax Department have been claiming to give refunds in 7 days.
According to CA Dr. Surana, talking about refunds, the Income Tax Department usually expresses that efforts are made to process refunds as soon as possible. He said, ‘However, getting a refund depends on many different factors. These include the accuracy of the returns filed, whether the TDS and income details match in Form 26AS and AIS and the prompt of e-verification by the taxpayers and whether the return has been selected for any further verification or processing or not.’
Apart from this, the taxpayer’s bank account should be pre-validated with PAN. He said that it is possible that many salaried taxpayers may get a refund within a week, sometimes the processing time may vary.
