Income Tax Return Verification and Refund News (August 24): Many taxpayers submit their returns on the e-filing portal of the Income Tax Department before the due date but forget to verify. As per tax rules, all ITR filers are required to verify their returns within 30 days. When a taxpayer fails to verify his/her ITR, such return is not taken for processing and may result in non-issuance of tax refund (if applicable).
ITR verification is a simple process that doesn’t take more than a few minutes when done online (see below). However, data till August 23 shows more than 31 lakh taxpayers are yet to verify their returns.
According to data on the Income Tax website, more than 6.91 crore returns have been filed till August 23 but only 6.59 crore returns have been verified by taxpayers. As the 30-day time limit for return verification is about to end in a few days, the Income Tax department on Wednesday alerted taxpayers on the X platform (formerly Twitter) to complete the verification.
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“Dear Taxpayers, Complete your e-filing process today! Do not forget to verify your ITR within 30 days of filing. Delayed verification may lead to levy of late fee in accordance with provisions of the Income-tax Act, 1961. Don’t delay, verify your ITR today,’ the Income Tax Department said.
Non-verification of ITR not only delays refunds but such returns are also considered invalid after the expiry of 30 days. Delayed verification can further lead to a levy of a late fee as per the provisions of the Income Tax Act.
The ITR filing due date for Assessment Year 2023-24 was July 31 for non-audit cases. Through a notification last year, the Income Tax Department reduced the time limit for e-verification or hard copy submission of ITR-V to 30 days.
How to verify ITR
You can verify your ITR easily through OTP on a mobile registered with Aadhaar, netbanking, and also offline. For e-verification through Aadhaar OTP, you should log in to the e-filing portal and click on ‘e-Verify Return’ under the e-file tab. Here you can select the mode of e-verification and complete the process.
While offline verification of ITR can also be done by sending the printed ITR verification form to the Centralised Processing Centre of the Income Tax Department in Bengaluru through speed post, it is recommended to do it online as only a few days are left.