Once your return is filed and verified, the portal starts showing you a status — and the wording is doing a poor job of telling you whether anything is wrong. Most of these statuses mean wait, a couple mean act now, and one that sounds alarming is usually harmless.
Here is what each one actually means, roughly how long it lasts, and the point at which waiting stops being the right answer.
You can check your status by logging in at incometax.gov.in and opening e-File, then Income Tax Returns, then View Filed Returns. The Know Your Refund Status service on the same portal gives the same information keyed to your PAN and assessment year.
Submitted and pending for e-verification
This means your return exists but is not yet filed in any way that counts. Nothing will happen — no processing, no refund — until you verify it, and you have only 30 days from submission to do so.
This is not a waiting status. It is a to-do item. Our guide on how to e-verify your ITR covers all six methods, of which Aadhaar OTP takes about a minute.
Successfully e-verified
Verification is done and your return is now queued at the Centralised Processing Centre. Nothing is required from you.
This status can persist for days or weeks. It is not a sign of a problem — it simply means CPC has not picked up your return yet, and the queue is longest in the weeks immediately after the filing deadline.
Under processing
CPC is actively working through your return, matching what you declared against the TDS and income data it already holds from your AIS and Form 26AS.
This is the longest status and the one that generates the most anxiety. Processing commonly takes anywhere from a couple of weeks to a few months, and returns with capital gains, multiple income sources or mismatches take longer than a plain salary return.
There is genuinely nothing to do while this shows. It is worth acting only once you cross the timelines discussed at the end of this article.
Processed with no demand no refund
This reads like something went wrong. It usually did not.
It means CPC has finished, agreed with your computation, and concluded that you owe nothing further and are owed nothing back. Your tax was settled exactly by the TDS and advance tax already paid. For a salaried person whose employer deducted the right amount, this is the normal and correct outcome.
It only warrants a second look if you were expecting a refund. In that case something in your return differed from what the department holds — a deduction disallowed, an income added, a TDS credit not matched. The Section 143(1) intimation sent to your registered email sets out the department's figures next to yours, line by line. Open it and find the row that differs before assuming an error.
That email is password protected. The password is your PAN in lowercase followed by your date of birth in DDMMYYYY format, with no space between them.
Processed with refund due, and refund awaited
CPC has agreed a refund is owed and it is on its way to being paid. This typically resolves within a few weeks.
If it sits at this status for an unusually long time, the most common cause by far is a bank account that is not pre-validated, or one whose name does not match your PAN records. Check the bank account section of your portal profile and confirm the account shows as validated and EVC-enabled. A refund cannot be credited to an unvalidated account, and the status will not tell you that is the problem.
Refund issued but not received
The department has released the money and it has not reached you. The gap is almost always at the bank end.
Check the account number and IFSC on the portal against your actual account, particularly if your bank has merged with another in recent years, which changes the IFSC and silently breaks previously valid records. A closed or dormant account will also reject the credit.
Where the credit has failed, the remedy is a refund reissue request, raised on the portal under the services section. Fix the bank details first, then raise the request — reissuing to the same broken account simply fails again.
Processed with demand due
This one does require action. The department has computed more tax than you paid and is asking for the difference.
Do not simply pay it. Open the 143(1) intimation and find where the two computations diverge. Genuine department errors are less common than genuine taxpayer omissions — forgotten savings-account interest, an FD whose TDS was deducted but whose income was not declared, or a deduction claimed without the underlying proof. But mismatched TDS credits do happen, and paying an incorrect demand is much harder to undo than disputing it.
If you agree with the demand, pay it through the portal. If you disagree, you can submit a response disagreeing with the demand and state your grounds. There are time limits on responding, so do not leave it.
Defective return under Section 139(9)
Your return has a flaw that stops it being processed — commonly the wrong ITR form, or income declared in a way that does not reconcile.
You are given a window, typically 15 days, to file a corrected return. Miss it and the original return can be treated as invalid, which puts you back to square one with the deadline consequences that follow. The most frequent cause is a salaried person who sold shares or redeemed mutual funds filing ITR-1 when they needed ITR-2; our guide on which ITR form you should file explains where that line falls.
When waiting stops being the right answer
There is no guaranteed processing time, but there are points where inaction becomes the wrong choice.
If your return has been under processing for more than a few months with no intimation, or shows a refund due that has not moved in over a month, it is reasonable to raise a grievance on the portal rather than continuing to wait. Grievances are filed under the services section and are answered in writing.
When you do, be specific. State your PAN, the assessment year, the acknowledgement number, the date you filed, the date you e-verified, and the exact status currently showing. A grievance that says the refund has not arrived gets a generic reply; one that gives the department the reference numbers to look it up gets a real one.
One piece of good news while you wait: where a refund is delayed beyond the department's own timelines, interest under Section 244A is payable to you on the refund amount. It is not compensation for the inconvenience, but the delay is not entirely uncompensated.
Before raising anything, do check the basics: that the return was actually e-verified, and that your bank account is pre-validated. Between them, those two account for most refunds that appear to be stuck.
This article is general educational information, not personalised tax advice. Portal status wording, processing timelines and the grievance process change from time to time, so confirm the current position on incometax.gov.in, and consult a qualified chartered accountant if you receive a demand or a defective-return notice you do not understand.