ITR Refund Status: 2025 is just seven days away, but many people still haven’t received their ITR refunds. If you’re also worried about your pending refund, here’s some good news.
If you haven’t made any mistakes while filing your ITR and haven’t received your refund yet , there’s no need to despair. If the Income Tax Department’s Centralized Processing Center (CPC) doesn’t issue your refund nine months after filing your ITR, you’ll start accruing interest on it.
In fact, the Centralized Processing Center (CPC) is also bound by deadlines, just like taxpayers. As a rule, the CPC must process your return within nine months of the end of the financial year in which you filed your ITR. If you filed your return for the current assessment year on time or within the late filing deadline of December 31, 2025, the CPC has until December 31, 2026, to process it. If your refund hasn’t arrived after this time, you will begin accruing interest on the refund.
If the refund is not received by December 31, what does it mean?
According to tax experts, if the Central Public Accounts Office (CPO) doesn’t process your return within the stipulated timeframe, your ITR will be considered final in the form in which you filed it. This means that the acknowledgment you received upon filing your ITR will be considered the final intimation under Section 143 of the Income Tax Act, and the CPC will not be able to make any new demands or adjustments thereafter. Even after the deadline is missed, the Income Tax Department remains responsible for issuing a valid refund, if any, to you. It also charges interest to taxpayers for late refunds.