Three ways to know the status of your income tax refund

January is a good time to do a few things related to your personal investments. For instance, claim your leave travel allowance from your company. And, also find out about your income tax refund.

There is a good chance that you’ve already received an email relating to refund from the income tax department, especially if you’ve done your income tax returns online in 2012. You get a tax refund if you have paid more than what you actually need to pay.

For instance, you are likely to pay an extra amount if you are paying an advance tax. At times, your employer deducts a higher tax at source (TDS) than what you need to pay. Now, if you have paid an extra tax, and also filed returns online and wondering what happened to your returns, you can simply check for the status online or via phone.

Online: You can do this on the websites of the income-tax department ( here ) or National Securities Depository ( here ). You just need to check out the “status of tax refund” link. If for some reason you have a query about the refund, you can get in touch with the Aaykar Sampark Kendra at this email at refunds@incometaxindia.gov.in.

You simply need to provide your PAN and the assessment year to check the refund status. You can view the status of refund 10 days after the refund is sent by the assessing officer to the refund banker, which is State Bank of India . So, you might just have to wait for the papers to move form one department to aonther.

“The IT department has a Centralized Processing Centre in Banglore, where the processing of income tax returns happen and refund, if applicable, are transmitted to refund bankers. The amount is directly credit into bank account, provided you have mentioned the bank details on the respective IT forms,” said Anil Rego, Chartered Accountant and CEO, Right Hirizons, Investment Advisory and Wealth Management. In case, where you haven’t mentioned the bank details, you would get a paper cheque for the refund amount at the address mentioned by you on the form.

Phone call: State Bank of India is the income tax department’s refund banker. So, if you are not able to get the information about the refund status online, you can simply call SBI’s toll free number, 1-800-4259760, to check for the status. In case for some reason you are unable to get status of your refunds or if you have any queries you can contact Aaykar Sampark Kendra at 0124-2438000

Personal Visit: Alternatively, you could also visit your local tax office for the refund. As filing returns online has been made compulsory for certain categories, you can expect to get your refunds sooner going forward. But until then may be you will just have to wait.