You filed your ITR three weeks ago. Every couple of days you log in, refresh the refund status, and… nothing. “Under processing.” Or worse, silence. Here's the uncomfortable truth: a refund that won't move is almost never the department being slow. It's one small mistake on your return, quietly holding your money hostage.
Most of the 13 below take under a minute to avoid — and the worst offender of all isn't even a tax error. It's forgetting to click one button. We've ordered them by how badly each one freezes your refund, so start at the top.
The four refund-killers — fix these first
You didn't e-verify within 30 days
This is the number-one reason refunds never even start. Filing is only half the job: if you don't e-verify within 30 days, the portal treats your return as invalid — as if you never filed. No verification, no processing, no refund.
Fix: e-Verify the moment you submit, with Aadhaar OTP, net banking or EVC. Never “do it later.”
Wrong or unvalidated bank account
Your refund is paid by direct credit, and only to a pre-validated account. A wrong account number or IFSC, a closed account, or one you never validated — and the refund simply fails and bounces back to the department.
Fix: Pre-validate your refund account on the portal (PAN-linked, EVC-enabled) before you file.
A mismatch with your AIS / Form 26AS
The income and TDS you report must line up with the government's own records in your AIS, TIS and Form 26AS. Any gap — a missing FD interest, a TDS entry you skipped — flags the return for manual review and quietly adds weeks.
Fix: Download your AIS and 26AS and reconcile every figure before filing, not after.
You picked the wrong ITR form
File ITR-1 when your income actually needed ITR-2 — a capital gain, foreign income, NRI status — and the return is marked defective under Section 139(9). Your refund freezes until you refile on the correct form.
Fix: Take the 60-second form check first.
30 days
The window to e-verify your ITR after filing. Miss it and the return is treated as invalid — the most common reason a refund never even starts.
Take Ravi. He filed on 10 July, breathed out, and assumed he was done. He wasn't — he never e-verified. By 9 August his 30-day window closed, his return was marked invalid, and the refund he was owed simply never entered the queue. He found out in September, when he had to file all over again as a belated return — late fee and all. One unclicked button cost him two months and a penalty.
Income you forgot to mention
Omitting small income streams
Savings-account and FD interest, a one-off freelance payment, ₹6,000 of dividends — the small sums you forget are exactly the ones already sitting in your AIS. Leave them out and you've created a mismatch the system catches instantly.
Fix: Report every income, however small — your AIS already knows about it.
Forgetting to report exempt income
Exempt doesn't mean invisible. PPF interest, NRE-account interest, certain dividends, long-term gains within limits — they're tax-free, but they still must be disclosed. Skipping them reads as under-reporting.
Fix: Declare exempt income in the 'Exempt Income' schedule — it's disclosure, not tax.
Multiple Form 16s, not consolidated
Switched jobs this year? Each employer issued a Form 16 and each applied the basic exemption and standard deduction afresh — so your tax was under-deducted. Report only one and you under-state income; the mismatch follows you.
Fix: Combine every Form 16, claim the standard deduction once, and pay any shortfall.
Claims and cross-checks
Incorrect capital gains
Share and mutual-fund gains are the most common notice trigger of all — wrong purchase date, wrong cost, missing the new 12.5%/20% rates, or mixing up short- and long-term. Your broker's statement and your AIS don't forgive arithmetic.
Fix: Re-check each gain against the new rules.
Overstating deductions
Inflating 80C, claiming an HRA you can't prove, or deductions you never actually made is the fastest route into scrutiny — and the new regime disallows most of them anyway. Unsubstantiated claims don't speed your refund; they stop it.
Fix: Claim only what you can document — and confirm your regime even allows it.
Selecting the wrong Assessment Year
Income earned in FY 2025-26 is filed under Assessment Year 2026-27 — not 2025-26. Pick the wrong AY and you've effectively filed the wrong return, with your refund attached to the wrong year.
Fix: For this year's filing, the Assessment Year is 2026-27. Full stop.
Mismatched personal details
A name spelled differently from your PAN, a wrong date of birth, an outdated bank IFSC — small personal-data gaps between your return and your PAN records fail validation and stall processing before your tax is even looked at.
Fix: Make sure your name, PAN and date of birth match your PAN card exactly.
Compliance traps that quietly eat your refund
Foreign assets left out of Schedule FA
If you're a resident with overseas shares, a foreign bank account or an RSU grant, Schedule FA disclosure is mandatory — and omitting it is treated as a serious compliance breach, not a slip. (NRIs are exempt; this is a residents-only trap.)
Fix: Residents: disclose every foreign asset in Schedule FA. NRIs: you don't have to.
Ignoring an old tax demand
An unpaid demand from any earlier year is the silent refund-thief. Under Section 245 the department can offset this year's refund against it — you get an intimation with about 30 days to respond, and if you ignore it, the adjustment simply happens.
Fix: Check 'Response to Outstanding Demand' on the portal before you expect a rupee back.
A refund that won't move is almost never the department being slow. It's one small mistake holding your money hostage.
What it means for you
Honest take: filing is the easy twenty minutes; your refund is decided by the boring ten that come after — verify, reconcile, pre-validate. The mistakes that actually cost people aren't exotic. They're the small, skippable ones: an unclicked e-verify, a number that doesn't match the AIS, the same form you filed last year when your income quietly changed.
So do the two checks that prevent the priciest errors before you file: confirm which ITR form is actually yours, and if you sold any shares, funds or property, sanity-check the gains at the new rates. Then pick the regime that pays you back with the old vs new regime calculator, e-verify, and your refund usually lands in a few weeks — not months.
For AY 2026-27 (FY 2025-26). Rules, timelines and section references are based on the Income Tax e-filing portal and reputable tax sources at the time of writing; refund times vary by case. Confirm anything specific on incometax.gov.in or with a CA. General information, not tax advice.