The Hindu : Karnataka / Bangalore News : It is a taxing time waiting for refund

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Saturday, Aug 23, 2008
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Karnataka

Karnataka - Bangalore

It is a taxing time waiting for refund

M. Raghuram

BANGALORE: For Income Tax payers, September and October is the time when they get refund (excess tax collected). But last year that did not happen.

Income Tax payers are making regular trips to the offices to know when they would get the refund for 2006-07.

Refund that used to come within six months till three years ago, is now taking 16 to 18 months, and in some cases even 20 months in the State. After the liberalised housing loan schemes in the last three years, the number of taxpayers claiming refund had gone up significantly in Karnataka. According to the Income Tax officials (Bangalore and Goa circle), about five lakh people file their returns in Bangalore alone and about 2.5 lakh are eligible for refund.

There are 24 Income Tax offices in Karnataka, with not less than 50,000 assessees in each of them.

According to Chief Commissioner, Income Tax-Bangalore I, Durgesh Shankar: “Most of the time the delay in refund is due to the assessees not giving their bank account MICR numbers, PAN data and change of address.” He said with the information technology and pharma companies coming to the State, the salaries of private sector companies had gone up and both returns and refund had registered exponential growth.

To mitigate the problems of assessees seeking refund, the Income Tax Department has launched “Refund Banker Scheme” in Delhi, Mumbai, Chennai, Kolkata, Bangalore and Patna.

Here, refund was credited directly to the bank account of the taxpayer, besides expediting the issue of cheques. This scheme was likely to be extended to more regions.

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