NEW DELHI: The finance ministry on Friday said over 22 per cent of the verified returns were processed on the same day, while the overall average processing time was only 26 days for ITR assessments in the last fiscal year.
The ministry said that during 2021-22, over 5.70 crore income tax returns (ITRs) were processed.
Over 1.28 crore or over 22.4 per cent were processed on the same day after verification.
Over 1.47 crore ITRs were processed within a week, while over 72 lakh were processed within a fortnight and over 70 lakh within a month.
Once a taxpayer files ITR, it is verified by the Centralized Processing Centre, Bengaluru. Thereafter, it is processed and refunds, if any, are issued.
During 2021-22, income tax refunds worth Rs 2.24 lakh crore were issued to 2.43 crore taxpayers. In the previous year, over Rs 2.59 lakh crore worth refunds were issued to 2.37 crore taxpayers.
"The government has been focussing on refunds for last two years. Last year, a lot of pending refunds have been cleared. This year more number of refunds have been given.... In the coming years, we will not be having backlog of refunds and this has happened because of faster processing of returns," Joint Secretary in revenue department Ritvik Pandey told reporters here.
During the last two years, the effort has been to clear backlog of refunds to infuse liquidity into the hands of businesses, the ministry said.
