On getting no response from the bank even one year after giving a request to transfer his and his wife’s individual accounts to a nearer branch, Amit Chaturvedi (name changed) completed e-filing of Income Tax Return (ITR) for the Assessment Year 2019-20 in July-end with the details of existing account to get the tax refund.

After a few days of filing the return, he went to the bank branch near his house to open a Sukanya Samdriddhi Account (SSY) for his daughter, and a joint account, with his daughter as the first holder and Amit as the second holder, was opened for that purpose. The first payment was made through the cheque of the existing account, that is in the distant branch of the bank, in which Amit’s wife also has the account.

Recently, Amit transferred some amount online to his wife’s account and the statement that generated after the payment process was complete showed that the amount was transferred from Amit’s account in the nearer branch to the wife’s account to the distant branch.

Amit got confused and contacted the nearer branch. After checking the account details, a bank official said the account belongs to this branch only and Amit was mistaking that the account was opened in the other branch. To prove his point, Amit had to show his cheque book that was issued by the other branch. But the officials expressed their disbelief on how the branch was changed without any intimation to the new branch and the account holder. They also asked either to get a new cheque book issued as the existing book is no longer a home branch cheque book or get the account transferred back to the other branch.

While getting a new fresh cheque book issued is not a big issue, Amit was wondering how to get the tax refund from the Income Tax (I-T) Department as the ITR contains IFSC of the older branch, even as the account number is same.

“In this case, the refund amount will not be credited to the bandk account and a request has to be sent to the I-T Department to issue a cheque,” said CA Karan Batra, Founder and CEO of CharteredClub.com, adding, “A revised return may also be filed if ITR is not processed yet.”

So, be careful while providing bank details in you ITR, especially if you have some tax refund. In case you have requested to change your bank branch, don’t mark it to get the refund amount.

However, after filing your ITR, if you realise that there was a mistake in entering account details in which refund is scheduled to come, or the details have been changed after the ITR is filed, log in to your e-filing account to check if the ITR is processed or not.

In case the ITR is not processed yet, you may file a revised return with correct/changed account details. Otherwise, in case the ITR is processed, you have to request the I-T Department to issue a cheque, once the refund is failed to get credited to your account.

Even if the ITR is not processed, you may wait to till the refund process is failed, to request the I-T Department to issue a cheque, if you don’t want to file a revised return.

Source : Mint