If you have miscalculated income tax and paid in excess or have an excess tax deducted at source (TDS), worry not. You can get a refund of the excess amount by claiming a refund at the time of filing of income tax returns. The income tax department will verify your returns and process a refund. However, this refund will only be transferred electronically to your bank account that is linked with your PAN, effective from 1 March 2019.
For such a refund to be successful, you must pre-validate your bank account on the income tax e-filing portal at the time of return filing. Here is all you need to know about pre-validating your bank account for a smooth and secure e-refund.
1. Availability of e-Verification options
e-Verification of the returns must be done with the help of a 10-digit alphanumeric Electronic Verification Code (EVC) sent to your registered mobile number. There are four kinds of e-verification options:
2. Online procedure to a pre-validate bank account
Taxpayers will receive their income tax refund only if their bank account is linked with their PAN (Permanent Account Number). For this purpose, you should “pre-validate your bank account” under the income tax e-filing page. You must log in to the e-filing website and update your bank account. The procedure is explained below.
3. Online procedure to a pre-validate bank account
Step 1: Visit the income tax e-filing portal at www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in.
Step 2: Click on the ‘Login’ option and enter your login credentials. Use your PAN as User ID.
Step 3: Upon logging in successfully, click on ‘Profile Settings’ and choose ‘Pre-validate Your Bank Account’ option.
Step 4: Now, enter your bank account details such as account number, IFSC, bank name, and contact details. The PAN, name, mobile number, and email address provided with your bank account must match with that of those of your bank account to pre-validate successfully. Hence, it is essential to keep in mind to link or update your PAN with your bank before pre-validating your bank account details under the e-filing portal.
Step 5: Click on ‘Pre-validate’ button.
4. Check the status of your request
You can check the status of your request in the following ways:
You can add/remove bank account after 24 hours.
You must also know that mobile number or email address cannot be changed without revalidation from the bank.
5. Illustration
Consider a case where your name in PAN card has a mistake in how the name is spelt. If your name is ‘Ramesh Kumar’ as per your birth certificate, Aadhaar, bank passbook, and driving license, but says ‘Ramesh Talmaar’ in your PAN. You have no clue that it can be corrected and you have been using the same card. You need to correct your PAN data and link the same with Aadhaar.
Now, you have quoted the PAN while pre-validating the bank account on income tax e-filing portal, you can check the status of your request after 36 hours of the request. Your request will be rejected as the name in PAN does not match the name associated with the bank account.
As per the latest provision amended during the Budget 2019, you can use Aadhaar number in place of PAN for return filing. This provision proves useful in the case of the example above. Ramesh can validate his bank account using Aadhaar card (his name is correct in Aadhaar card). At the same time, it is essential that the PAN is corrected and linked with the Aadhaar in the e-filing portal.
