The income tax department has provided refunds worth Rs 80,000 crore to over 24 lakh taxpayers so far this financial year.

This includes personal income tax refunds of Rs 28,180 crore issued to over 23.05 lakh taxpayers and corporate tax refunds of Rs 60,472 crore to over 1.58 lakh taxpayers during this period.

“CBDT has, so far, issued refunds of over Rs 88,652 crore to more than 24.64 lakh taxpayers from April 1, 2020 onwards,” the income tax department said.

The Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) is the apex decision-making body in direct tax matters and administers personal income tax and corporate tax.

The finance ministry had earlier said that keeping in mind the situation arising out of the spread of Covid-19 and the related lockdown, emphasis was laid on releasing all refunds at the earliest possible time.

All refund related issues are being taken up as a priority and was likely to be completed by August 31, 2020. The income tax department has asked taxpayers to provide immediate response to emails of the I-T department in order to facilitate faster processing of refunds.

Since only about 0.5 per cent of the returns is selected for scrutiny, refunds are issued expeditiously at the time of processing itself for the bulk of the taxpayers.

Refunds are now directly credited to bank accounts of taxpayers.