Income Tax Refund: Necessary to Pre-Validate Your Bank Account

From 1st March 2019, the income tax department has made it mandatory to credit refunds into the taxpayers’ bank account. The refund shall be credited only if those bank accounts are linked with the PAN of the taxpayer and validated on the income tax e-filing portal.

Hence, it is not enough to mention your bank account details in the income tax return. You have to additionally pre-validate the bank account number, where the income tax refund is required, in your income tax e-filing account. 

Before pre-validating your bank account with the income tax website, your PAN must be available in the bank’s database where your bank account is maintained. Also, the name as per the PAN card should match the name in your bank account.  

To link your bank account with PAN (pre-validate your bank account):

• Go to the income tax e-filing website “www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in” and log in to your account by mentioning the user ID and password.
• After logging in, go to the ‘Profile Settings’ tab and select ‘Prevalidate your bank account’ from the dropdown.
• It will open a list of bank accounts already linked with the e-filing portal. If there is no such bank account or if you want to receive a refund in a different account, click on the add button.
• Now, enter all the details such as PAN, name as in PAN, bank account number, bank account type, IFSC code, name of the bank, bank branch (optional), mobile number and email ID (optional).
• Click on the ‘Prevalidate’ button, and you will receive an acknowledgement.

You can check the status of your request under the ‘Pre-validate your bank account’ tab in ‘Profile Settings’ after logging in to your account. If the status is ‘Validated’, then the income tax refund will be credited to that bank account. Also, the income tax department will send the status to your registered mobile number and email Id.

You can also generate an Electronic Verification Code (EVC) as a one-time password for e-verification of the income tax return by pre-validating the bank account. However, to enable EVC, you have to validate your mobile number (mandatory) and email ID (optional). 

For any clarifications/feedback on the topic, please contact the writer at namita.shah@cleartax.in