By Newsgram Staff Writer

"Income-tax refunds amounting to Rs.1,19,964.13 crore relating to last three assessment years are pending as on March 5, 2015," Minister of State for Finance Jayant Sinha told Rajya Sabha in today.

Processing, determination, issuance and encashment of income tax refund claims is a continuous process and a part of the outstanding refunds would, therefore, in the normal course also get postponed to next year, Sinha said.

As of now, the pending amount for the current fiscal so far is Rs.68,032.21 crore. It was Rs.43,963.42 crore in 2013-14 and Rs.7,968.51 crore in 2012-13, MoS Finance said, and added, "An amount of Rs.106,499 crore has already been refunded to the taxpayers in the current financial year till March 7, 2015," he added.

The projected target of income tax collection in the ongoing 2014-15 fiscal is Rs.700,000 crore.

For the coming fiscal 2015-16, the union government has not changed the ceiling on income tax but introduced an additional two per cent surcharge on the income of super-rich individuals in the country.