How to Check Your Income Tax Refund Status Online

After filing your Income Tax Return (ITR), any refund owed to you goes through a processing and verification pipeline before it's actually credited to your bank account. The status is trackable in real time, so there's no need to guess or wait blindly — you can see exactly where your refund stands.

Where to check refund status

• The e-filing portal (incometax.gov.in) — log in and check under "View Filed Returns" or the refund status section.
• The NSDL/Protean refund status portal — enter your PAN and assessment year to check independently of the main e-filing login.

Step-by-step: check your refund status

1. Log in to the income tax e-filing portal with your PAN-linked credentials.
2. Go to your filed returns for the relevant assessment year.
3. Open the return's status to see whether it's been processed, and the refund status if applicable.
4. Cross-check on the NSDL refund status page using your PAN and assessment year for an independent confirmation.

What the common status messages mean

• Return submitted / under processing — your ITR has been received but not yet processed; no refund action has happened yet.
• Refund determined — the tax department has calculated and approved a refund amount.
• Refund paid / credited — the amount has been sent to your bank account; it typically reflects within a few working days.
• Refund failed — the refund was approved but couldn't be credited, usually due to a bank account validation issue (e.g. account not pre-validated, or a mismatch in the account holder's name).

Common mistakes

• Not pre-validating your bank account on the e-filing portal before filing, which is the single most common cause of a failed refund credit.
• Panicking at "under processing" status — this is normal for a period after filing and doesn't mean anything is wrong.
• Checking only one portal — the NSDL refund status page can sometimes show updates before or after the main e-filing portal reflects them.