After You File: E-Verification, Refund Tracking and What a Notice Really Means

You clicked submit, downloaded the acknowledgement, and felt that small wave of relief. Then a quieter question arrives, usually around day three: now what? Is my return actually filed? Where is my refund? And why has the department sent me something that looks like a notice?

Here is the short answer. Submission is only the middle of the journey. Your return still has to be verified within 30 days, processed by the Centralised Processing Centre (CPC) in Bengaluru under Section 143(1), and closed with an intimation that says one of three things: accepted as filed, refund due, or tax payable. This post follows the what happens after you file section of our service page and walks each stage in the order it actually reaches you.

Stage one: e-verification — the 30 days that decide whether you filed at all

An uploaded return that is not verified is not treated as a filed return. That is not portal language. It is the law as it stands.

Under Notification No. 2 of 2024 dated 31 March 2024, you have 30 days from the date of uploading to e-verify your return. The window used to be 120 days; it is 30 now, and old habit is the single biggest reason returns quietly die after submission. Verify inside the 30 days and your upload date counts as your filing date. Verify after them and the date of verification becomes your filing date, with the late fee and interest that follow a late return. Do not verify at all, and the return is treated as not furnished — no refund, no loss carry-forward, no proof of filing for the loan or visa file you will need in November.

The routes are quick. Aadhaar OTP on the mobile registered with Aadhaar suits most individuals. Net banking takes you through your bank and back to the portal verified. An EVC can be generated through a pre-validated bank or demat account. A Digital Signature Certificate is the route for returns that must be signed digitally. And if none of those work for you, print the ITR-V, sign it in blue ink and send it to CPC, Bengaluru — 560500; the 30 days run to the date CPC receives it, not the date you post it.

If the 30 days have already slipped past, do not pretend the return exists. The portal carries a condonation request route: you state the reason for the delay and ask the department to accept the late verification. It is a discretion, not an entitlement, so file it promptly and keep the acknowledgement. A return rescued by condonation is a return; a return left unverified is nothing at all.

Stage two: processing under Section 143(1) — what CPC actually does

Once verified, your return joins the CPC queue. Processing under Section 143(1) is a machine check, not an investigation. CPC recomputes your total income after a short, closed list of adjustments under Section 143(1)(a):

• an arithmetical error in the return;
• an incorrect claim that is apparent from information in the return itself;
• disallowance of a loss carried forward where the earlier year's return, against which that loss is set off, was itself filed late;
• disallowance of expenditure, or an increase in income, indicated in the audit report but not taken into account in the return;
• disallowance of certain deductions where the return itself was filed after the Section 139(1) due date.

One adjustment you will read about on older blogs is missing from that list on purpose. Clause (vi) spoke of adding income that appears in Form 26AS, Form 16A or Form 16 but was not included in the return. The third proviso to Section 143(1)(a) bars that adjustment for every return furnished for an assessment year beginning on or after 1 April 2018. CPC cannot use it on your AY 2026-27 return. That does not make a mismatch harmless — an income line the department can see and you did not report stays on your record and can be taken up later — but it will not be added silently at processing. If your statements do not agree with each other, our guide to fixing an AIS, 26AS and Form 16 mismatch shows which entry only the deductor can correct at source.

Before CPC makes any adjustment that does apply, it must first intimate the proposed adjustment to you, in writing or electronically, and consider your response. If no response comes within 30 days of that intimation, the adjustment is made. Read that again, because it is your protection and your deadline in one sentence: a proposed adjustment is a question, and silence is treated as an answer.

After the adjustments, CPC computes the tax, interest and fee, sets them against your TDS, TCS, advance tax and self-assessment tax, and determines the final figure — payable by you, or refundable to you. The intimation under Section 143(1) then lands in your email and your portal account. It cannot be sent after nine months from the end of the financial year in which the return was made. Where no sum is payable or refundable and no adjustment was made, your acknowledgement itself is deemed to be the intimation — which is why a silent inbox after a clean filing usually means exactly what you hope it means.

Reading your intimation: three outcomes, three responses

Compare the two columns in the intimation — "as provided by taxpayer" and "as computed" — line by line. The line where they part company is the whole story. Most demands I see at this stage trace back to a TDS credit that was not matched, or interest under Sections 234A, 234B or 234C that the filer had not provided for. Neither is a scandal. Both are fixable, and both are cheaper to face in the week the intimation arrives than in the month the recovery notice does.

Stage three: the refund — tracking it, and rescuing it when it fails

A refund determined under Section 143(1) is paid by direct credit to the bank account you nominated and pre-validated on the portal. It carries interest under Section 244A at 0.5% for every month or part of a month. For a refund out of TDS, TCS or advance tax, that interest runs from 1 April of the assessment year where you filed on or before your due date, and from the date you furnished the return where you filed late — one more quiet cost of filing late that never appears on a penalty chart. No interest is payable at all where the refund is less than 10% of the tax determined.

Track the refund from your portal account, where the return and refund status sit together. A determined refund that never reaches the bank has usually failed for a dull reason: the account was never pre-validated, the name on the bank account does not match the PAN, the account is not linked with the PAN, or the IFSC has changed after a bank merger. The department or the refund banker, SBI, tells you the payment has failed. Believe the message and act on it — the money is held, not lost.

The rescue is a Refund Reissue request, and it runs in this order:

1. Log in and pre-validate the bank account first — correct account number and IFSC, name matching your PAN. Only a validated account can be selected for a reissue.
2. Open Services and choose Refund Reissue. Pick the assessment year of the failed refund.
3. Select the failed refund, choose the validated account the money should go to, and submit.
4. E-verify the request when the portal asks. Keep the success message and transaction reference with your intimation.

There is a mirror provision worth knowing before you spend a refund twice. If a later regular assessment finds that the refund granted at processing was too large — or that no refund was due at all — the excess is recovered from you with interest under Section 234D at the same 0.5% for every month or part of a month, from the date the refund was granted to the date of that regular assessment. The department pays you 0.5% when it is late; you pay it 0.5% when the money was never yours. Fair, in its own stern way.

The word "notice": what CPC paper really is, and what it is not

Think of CPC like the sorting office of a large courier company. It weighs every parcel, checks the label against the contents list, charges for the difference and sends you the slip. That slip is not an arrest warrant, and the sorting office is not the police — deeper questions, if any come, arrive from a different desk entirely, under different sections, and say so on their face.

So read post-filing paper by its section number, not by its envelope:

• A proposed adjustment under Section 143(1)(a) is a question before processing closes. Reply within 30 days, with figures.
• An intimation under Section 143(1) is the result of processing. It is information, plus a refund or a demand. It is not scrutiny.
• A defective return communication under Section 139(9) says the return itself has a hole in it and gives you fifteen days to mend it. That is a different problem with its own clock — our guide to the defective return notice under Section 139(9) works through it.
• A notice under Section 143(2) is the one that does open scrutiny. It must be served within three months from the end of the financial year in which the return was furnished — for a return filed in FY 2026-27, that window closes on 30 June 2027. If it comes, it asks for evidence in support of your return. It is still not a conclusion; it is the start of a conversation you should answer carefully and on time.

Almost everything that frightens filers in the month after filing is one of the first three. Ordinary paper. Handled by ordinary replies.

Your after-filing checklist

• E-verify within 30 days of uploading — today, not on day twenty-nine.
• Download and keep the acknowledgement, the return copy and, when it comes, the Section 143(1) intimation.
• Watch your email and the portal for a proposed adjustment; its 30 days run from the intimation, not from the day you notice it.
• Match the refund against your computation before you spend it, and remember Section 234D if a later assessment trims it.
• If the refund fails, pre-validate the account and raise the Refund Reissue request instead of waiting for the money to find you.
• Missed your filing date altogether? A belated return stays open until 31 December 2026, and if a filed return needs correcting, a revised return runs to 31 March 2027 — our note on belated ITR filing and the Section 234F penalty sets out what late filing costs and what it preserves.

If the paper that has reached you does not match anything described here — or it does, and you would rather not answer it alone — hand it to the team that files with this checklist every day: our income tax return filing service covers e-verification, refund tracking and notice replies inside the same engagement, so the season ends with an intimation you have actually read.