Income Tax: Returns verified but not processed yet? This could be the reason

Different stages of the filing of tax return include filing of return, verification, followed by processing of return. Once this is done, taxpayers can see the ‘processing completion’ notification in the tax filing portal (as shown in the image below).

The income tax department recently released data to show that the number of days it took to process the returns has shortened in the past few years.

While it took on average 82 days to process a return in the assessment year 2019-20; in 2022-23, it took 16 days, and it has further reduced to 10 days in the assessment year 2023-24.

So, there could be a case, and rightly so, where you have already filed your income tax return (before the July 31 deadline) but is yet not verified. For this, there could be reasons galore.

However, one of the most common reasons is that the information that you submitted in the return does not tally with that of form 26AS or AIS (annual information statement).

This means when you have declared your income to be ‘X’ amount and your documents (such as AIS) claim this to be ‘Y’ amount.

Then the income tax department would most likely send a query asking for the reason for the discrepancy.

And if you can justify the reasons for the same, your return will be processed. Else, the department would nudge you to pay the outstanding income tax. And until that takes place, the case will be shown as the ‘return filed but not processed’ (as shown in the image above).

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Updated: 15 Oct 2023, 09:07 AM IST