Income tax refunds of Rs 1.19 lakh cr pending in last 3 years

Income tax refunds to the tune of over Rs 1.19 lakh crore is pending for the last three fiscals, starting 2012-13, Parliament was informed on Tuesday.

"Income-tax refunds amounting to Rs 1,19,964.13 crore relating to last three assessment years are pending as on March 5, 2015," Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha said in a written reply in the Rajya Sabha.

The pending amount for current fiscal so far is Rs 68,032.21 crore; Rs 43,963.42 crore in 2013-14 and Rs 7,968.51 crore in 2012-13.

Processing, determination, issuance and encashment of income-tax refund claims is a continuous process and therefore a part of the outstanding refunds would in the normal course also get postponed to next year, Sinha said.

"An amount of Rs 1,06,499 crore has already been refunded to the taxpayers in the current financial year till March 7, 2015, which is 32.1 per cent higher than the amount refunded during the corresponding period of last financial year and is 17.02 per cent of the gross direct tax collections," he added.

In reply to a separate question, Sinha said government is committed towards engendering a non-adversarial tax regime.

Without naming the company, he minister said: "Government has accepted the order of the Bombay High Court in favour of a telecom company in a transfer pricing case after carefully examining the order and finding merit in the same."