A tax refund is an amount, which denotes the excess of taxes paid over the actual tax liability. The process of getting tax refunds from the Income Tax Department becomes at times very tiring and non-resultant process for individual taxpayers.
Thus, the individuals should look to plan their taxes in such a manner that they don’t pay extra taxes and not have to wait for months to claim their rightful refunds. The main reason behind extra tax deduction is due to no or incorrect disclosure of tax investments by the employees to the employers. Individual should look to plan their taxes and investments well in advance so to avoid last minute rush for making right tax investments.
We suggest doing following things to claim your refunds:
•    File your return of income – First and foremost requirement for claiming refunds to file to your return of income/ tax returns on time, submitting all the details of your tax investments;
•    Check Online tax credit (Form 26AS) – We also suggest to check the tax credit status online before filing of return of income. This exercise would help in quick processing of tax returns and refunds;
•    Bank details and address- The individual should look to give proper details of the bank account, like details such as MICR code, bank account number for prompt refund and also proper address.
Further, in a situation where you think that you forgot or did not have the proper documents to show the investments made, a Revised Return of Income needs to be submitted. Also, the actual claim for the tax refund needs to be done using Form 30.
Other Alternative course of actions:
•    If you do not receive your tax refund within a reasonable time which normally is within a maximum of one year from the date of filing the tax return, you can either visit the tax department’s office for the follow up of the refund or you can write a letter (along with the copy of acknowledgement of the tax return) to the concerned Income Tax Assessing Officer ;
•    If it is still not redressed then you may write a letter to the jurisdictional Chief Commissioner of the Income Tax with a copy to the Grievance Cell and the concerned Income Tax Officer. This letter may be accompanied by the copies of previous letter/s written to the Income Tax Assessing Officer and a copy of the tax return filed.
Further, the government to address such issues, the government has set up the Tax Ombudsman, to address grievances and to provide tax payers a platform to put forth his issues and problems.  The Ombudsman is an independent body initiated by the government and comprises of former Income Tax officials or officials from the Indian Revenue Service. These officers have been empowered to settle grievances and take up matters to the highest authority, with the sole aim of resolving it. They act as an arbitrator and are independent of the jurisdiction of the income-tax department.  Normally, these authorities look into issues such as  Delay or discrepancy in tax refunds, Impolite behaviour of tax officials, Interest waiver, Seizure of account books by department, Issues relating to allotment of Permanent Account Number, Non credit of tax paid, including tax deducted at source, Non-acknowledgement of letters or documents sent to the Department  and Other administrative matters that have been violated
The Ombudsman however will not help if the issue is being looked at as an appeal, revision, reference or writ by any income-tax authority or appellate authority or tribunal or court.

Thus, to conclude, it’s better to plan early, pay right taxes, then to wait for months and chase IT officials to get your rightful refund.

We at Taxmantra.com have the expertise in handling issues relating to individual taxation (Tax Returns + Tax Support+ Tax Planning).

Taxmantra.com provides most hassle free tax return filing/ online return filing experience. Once you have collected, your salary certificate and other documents, we request you to please log in to www.taxmantra.com/ereturns or you can also directly mail at info@taxmantra.com to submit the details. Upon receiving the documents, we would contact you to file your return of income.