I-T Dept Gives Taxpayers A Breather: ITRs Rejected Due to Tech Errors To Be Reprocessed By This Date

If your income tax return (ITR) was rejected even though they were filed correctly, there is good news. The Income Tax Department has stepped in to fix a technical glitch that led to the erroneous invalidation of several e-filed returns.

In a circular issued on July 28, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has informed that electronically filed returns (submitted up to March 31, 2024), which were mistakenly rejected by the Centralised Processing Centre (CPC) in Bengaluru due to technical issues, will now be reprocessed.

These returns will be taken up for action under Section 143(1) of the Income-tax Act, and intimation will be sent to affected taxpayers by March 31, 2026.

Why this relief now?

The move comes after multiple taxpayers raised grievances with the CPC, pointing out that their returns, some going back to earlier assessment years, were wrongly flagged as “invalid.” The original deadlines to process many of these had already lapsed, most notably December 31, 2024, for the assessment year 2023-24.

Taking note of this error, the CBDT, under Section 119 has now extended the processing timeline. For taxpayers, the reprocessing of these ITRs means two key things. Firstly, their returns will now be officially validated and second, if a refund is due, it will be issued along with applicable interest.

Who may not get refunds on these returns?

Though the CBDT has announced this relaxation timeline for ITRs that were mistakenly rejected by CPC, this doesn’t mean that all the returns would get validated or receive refunds.

Why? The major caveat is if your PAN is not linked with Aadhaar, no refund will be released. This is in line with earlier guidelines issued by the tax department, which make Aadhaar-PAN linkage a prerequisite for receiving any tax refund.

This relief by CBDT comes at a time when taxpayers are already preparing to file their ITRs for the previous financial year (2024-25) and the current AY 2024-26. The deadline for filing ITR this year has been extended to September 15, 2025.