Government Services · India · Income Tax

How to Claim a TDS Refund in India (2026)

Updated for 2026 · Claw Editorial

A TDS refund arises when the tax deducted at source on your salary, interest, rent, professional fees or other income, added to any advance tax or self assessment tax you paid, comes to more than the tax you actually owe for the year. The way to get that extra money back is to file your income-tax return (ITR) on the income-tax e-filing portal and claim the refund in it. There is no separate refund application. The department computes the refund when it processes your return under section 143(1) of the Income-tax Act, and pays it into the bank account you have pre-validated. This page walks through the full flow: checking how much TDS was deducted in your Form 26AS and Annual Information Statement, pre-validating your bank account, filing the return so the refund is claimed, tracking the refund, the common reasons a refund is delayed or adjusted, and the appeal route if the department wrongly withholds it or raises a mismatch demand. Last verified October 2026.

01When you are owed a TDS refund

You are usually owed a refund when one of these happens:

• Your employer deducted TDS on your salary but you had deductions (like 80C, 80D or HRA) that brought your final tax below what was cut.
• A bank deducted TDS on fixed deposit interest but your total income was below the taxable limit, and you did not file Form 15G or 15H in time.
• TDS was deducted on rent, commission or professional fees at a flat rate that is higher than your effective tax rate for the year.
• You paid advance tax or self assessment tax and the final liability turned out lower.

In every case the refund is claimed the same way: by filing a return that shows the tax paid on your behalf is more than the tax due. The difference is refunded with interest under section 244A where it applies. To understand what TDS is and how it shows on your salary, see Form 16 and TDS explained.

02Check your TDS first: Form 26AS and AIS

Before you file, confirm how much TDS was actually credited against your PAN. If you claim more than the department has on record, the refund will be cut to match, so this step matters.

• Form 26AS is your tax credit statement. Log in at incometax.gov.in, open the e-File or Services menu and view Form 26AS. It lists every deductor, the amount, and the TDS deposited.
• Annual Information Statement (AIS) and the Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS) show a wider picture: interest, dividends, securities and other reported income. Check these match your own records.

If a deductor cut TDS but did not deposit it or filed a wrong PAN, the credit will not show. Ask the deductor to correct their TDS return (file a revised Form 24Q or 26Q) before you file, otherwise the credit is hard to claim.

03Step by step: claim the refund in your ITR

The refund is claimed inside the return. The flow on the e-filing portal is:

• 1. Pre-validate your bank account. Under Profile, open "My Bank Account", add the account where you want the refund, and pre-validate it. A refund is only paid to a pre-validated account that is linked to your PAN. Keep your PAN linked to Aadhaar as well.
• 2. Pick the right ITR form. Salaried with simple income usually use ITR-1; those with capital gains, business or multiple properties use ITR-2, 3 or 4. The portal suggests a form but the responsibility is yours.
• 3. Fill income and TDS. Report all income and the TDS against it, matching Form 26AS. The utility auto-fills much of this, but check every figure.
• 4. Let it compute the refund. When tax paid is more than tax due, the return shows a refund figure. Confirm the bank account for the refund.
• 5. Submit and e-verify. File the return, then e-verify it within the time allowed, usually through Aadhaar OTP, net banking or the EVC. An un-verified return is not processed, so no refund is paid.

Processing and the refund only begin after e-verification, so do not skip the last step.

04Track the refund

Once the return is processed under section 143(1), you get an intimation by email showing the department has either accepted your refund or recomputed it. To track:

• Log in to the e-filing portal and open "View Filed Returns" or the refund/status page to see whether the return is processed and the refund issued.
• You can also check refund status on the NSDL/Protean TIN refund tracking page using your PAN and the assessment year.
• A refund is paid by direct credit to the pre-validated bank account. If it fails, the status shows the reason (account not validated, name mismatch, account closed), and you re-validate and raise a refund re-issue request on the portal.

05Why a refund is delayed or adjusted

Common reasons a refund is less than expected or does not arrive:

• Mismatch with Form 26AS. You claimed more TDS than is on record, so the department reduced it in the section 143(1) intimation.
• Bank account not pre-validated or the account name does not match the PAN.
• Adjustment against old demand. Under section 245 the department can set off your refund against tax it says you owe for an earlier year, after giving you notice to respond.
• Return picked for scrutiny or kept on hold pending verification.

If the intimation reduced your refund and you think it is wrong, you can file a rectification request under section 154 online, or respond to the section 245 adjustment notice. If that does not fix it, the next step is an appeal, explained below.

06If the refund is wrongly withheld: the dispute route

Most refund problems are a data mismatch and are solved by correcting Form 26AS or filing a rectification under section 154. But if the department recomputes your income, disallows a deduction, or raises a demand so that your refund disappears, that is a substantive order you can challenge. The first appeal is to the Commissioner of Income Tax (Appeals), the CIT(A), and from there to the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT), which is the final fact-finding authority on tax. Questions of law can go further to the High Court and the Supreme Court. For how the tax tribunals fit together, see ITAT, GSTAT and CESTAT coverage.

Claw is an all-in-one legaltech platform for Indian advocates, law firms, and corporate legal teams, combining AI-based case search, an AI legal assistant (Legal GPT), case management, and compliance automation across all Indian courts and tribunals.

If your refund dispute turns into a rectification fight, a CIT(A) appeal or an ITAT matter, you can create a FREE Claw account and track that matter across the forum that hears it. Claw covers 9,102 courts, benches and forums in India, including the ITAT benches, so there is a real tracking home for the orders and next dates. Judgment search spans 30 crore+ judgments, with Supreme Court decisions from 1950 and High Court decisions from 1990, and results return in under 5 seconds, which helps you or your chartered accountant or lawyer see how similar refund and TDS-credit disputes were decided. Claw does not train its AI models on your documents. This is general information and not legal advice, and a tax appeal still needs a professional for the arguments.

To see what is already filed in a forum, you can run a case search across Indian courts by party name. For the strict time limit on filing an appeal, see the limitation period for filing an appeal.

07Sources and further reading

• Income Tax e-filing portal: incometax.gov.in
• NSDL / Protean refund tracking: tin.tin.nsdl.com
• eCourts (case status): ecourts.gov.in
• Claw: clawlaw.in

This page is general information for readers in India, not legal advice. Tax rules, forms and section numbers can change, especially as the new Income-tax Act 2025 replaces the 1961 Act, so confirm the current provisions on the official portal before you file.

08Frequently asked questions