The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) on Wednesday said it has issued Rs 4,250 crore in pending direct tax refunds for assessment year (AY) 2019-20, during the week ended Tuesday. These refunds were issued to 10.2 lakh taxpayers whose claims were less than Rs 5 lakh, in each case.

Last week, the CBDT had announced that it would release the refunds to help taxpayers, especially those with relatively smaller refund claims, to tide over the potential cash flow issues, due to national lockdown in the aftermath of COVID-19 pandemic.

Further, the Board said that it was processing an additional 1.75 lakh refund claims, which would be credited directly to the taxpayer bank account in 5-7 business days from issuance. But in majority of these cases, the taxpayers have yet to respond to income tax department’s communication regarding reconciliation with their outstanding tax demand.

“It may be noted that these reminder emails from I-T department are in fact for the benefit of taxpayers as it seeks them to confirm their outstanding demand, their bank accounts and reconciliation of defect/mismatch prior to issue of refund,” it sad in a statement. It added that these assessees have been sent reminder emails to respond within a week so that refund can be processed accordingly.

Additionally, the Board said that the refunds issued during last week were in addition to Rs 1.84 lakh crore already issued during FY20 (ended March 31, 2020) to 2.50 crore assessees. In FY19, the I-T department had given refunds worth Rs 1.61 lakh crore.