Long delays in income tax refunds have prompted
the Finance Minister P Chidambaram to intervene. The Finance Minister
has told his taxmen to get cracking and speed up the refunds.
He
wants the taxmen to monitor all refund cases every month starting from
June for the next six months and clear all the pending refunds.
However, tax officials are clueless about the number and the amount of
pending refunds but they say that the problem is gigantic.
For
instance out of the 2.62 crore returns filed 1.16 crore returns are yet
to be processed and around 25 per cent of these returns or roughly 29
lakh returns would have a refund demand.
Tax revenues are
pouring in but the pile of tax returns that the government has to pay
is also growing. This year's refunds will be much more than last year's
Rs 37,000 crore, so the government needs to speed up the process of
refunding taxpayer's money.
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