Proposal for taxpayers to get refunds within a month: I-T Dept

New Delhi, Jan 18 (PTI) In good news for lakhs oftaxpayers in the country, the Income Tax department is mullinga proposal for providing them small refunds of below Rs onecrore within a month''s time.

Delay in receiving income tax refunds has been a majorcomplaint of taxpayers and the department is hoping to addressthe issue on priority basis.

"For refunds, I will talk to my officers and ask themif we can devise a mechanism to issue refunds, under a certainmonetary limit, within a month''s time or so," Central Board ofDirect Taxes (CBDT) Chairman Sudhir Chandra said today.

According to Income Tax officials, the proposalpertains to small tax refunds of an amount below Rs one crore.

Chandra said that he has been asking officials in theI-T department to work for the benefit of honest taxpayers andgive them the respect they deserve.

"We will be very firm with tax evaders without beingharsh. We will make sure that a honest taxpayer is respectedand will also try to create maximum trust for honesttaxpayers," Chandra said.

The Income Tax department is in the process of issuingmore than 40 lakh refund cases before April this year.

The department has streamlined the refunds process asthe statutory time limit to process the return and issuerefund in the financial year 2009-10 is March 31 and almost 49lakh such cases involving crores of rupees are pending withthe department, a senior I-T officer said.

Chandra also said the approach of the I-T departmentwill be based on the traditional Indian way of ''shubh-labh''(auspicious and benefit).

"Whatever we do, we will do it by the way ofshubh-labh. By this we mean that labh (tax collection) willonly be done through shubh (permissible provisions of the law)procedures," he said.

Income Tax department is also in the process ofestablishing three more I-T returns and refunds processingcentres at Manesar (Gurgaon), Pune and Kolkata on the lines ofthe existing centre at Bangalore.

To fasten the refunds through banks, the Refund BankerScheme has been made operational in the entire country withthe help of SBI by the department.