Filed Your ITR and Nothing Has Moved? How AIS Mismatches Delay Refunds in AY 2026-27

The 31 July 2026 deadline has passed for ITR-1 and ITR-2 filers, and the part most people skip now decides how fast the money comes back. E-verification is not the finish line — once a return is verified, CPC Bengaluru cross-checks every figure against Form 26AS, the Annual Information Statement and the Taxpayer Information Summary before releasing a rupee (Business Today, 2026).

Most refund delays in August are not scrutiny. They are arithmetic — a savings-account interest line you never saw, a bank account marked "Added" instead of "Validated", or gross interest reported net of TDS.

Why can a notice still arrive after e-verification?

Because verification only confirms that you filed the return — it says nothing about whether the numbers agree with what banks, employers and registrars already reported against your PAN. As Siddharth Maurya of Vibhavangal Anukulakara puts it, e-verifying "does not necessarily mean that there will be no notice issued to you after that" (Business Today, 2026).

CPC runs the return through structural checks first — right form, complete schedules, arithmetic that adds up. A failure there produces a defective return notice under Section 139(9) rather than an intimation. Only after that does the data matching begin, ending in a Section 143(1) intimation that shows the department's computation next to yours.

How long should processing and the refund actually take?

Budget for four to eight weeks. Returns are generally completed in 20–45 working days from the date of e-verification, with ITR-1 and ITR-4 clearing faster than ITR-2 and ITR-3, which carry capital gains or business income and need more checking (CAclubindia, 2026).

After the status flips to "Processed", refunds typically initiate within 3–7 days and reach a pre-validated account in another 3–5 working days through the SBI refund banker. In the August to October rush that same journey can take 20–30 days. Posting a signed ITR-V by post instead of e-verifying adds 7–15 days before the clock even starts.

Scale explains the queue. For AY 2025-26 the department received over 8.79 crore returns, and roughly 2.8% of them — about 24.6 lakh — were still unprocessed beyond three months as of early February 2026. A pending status in September is not yet a problem; the department may process until 31 December of the assessment year.

Which mismatches actually trigger a notice?

Large or unexplained gaps, not rounding differences. Minor variances against AIS, Form 26AS or TIS "need not always lead to an income tax notice", and selection rests on risk parameters and data analytics rather than on the fact that a mismatch exists (Business Today, 2026).

The recurring culprits are ordinary. Savings and fixed deposit interest reaches AIS through bank reporting whether or not you noticed it — including interest paid on last year's income tax refund. Reporting only the amount on which TDS was deducted rather than gross interest accrued produces a gap by construction. So does rental income the tenant deducted TDS on, and another taxpayer's transaction landing against your PAN.

There is a second category the matching engine flags without any AIS discrepancy at all: deduction claims that sit oddly against declared income. Outsized 80C, 80D or HRA claims and high-value transactions such as a property purchase inconsistent with reported income get attention on their own merits. Our guide to filing income tax online covers the documentation to keep ready for each of those.

Why is my refund stuck when the return looks correct?

Usually the bank account, not the return. Refunds cannot be issued to an account that is not pre-validated and PAN-linked, and the portal distinguishes between an account merely "Added" and one showing "Validated" — an incorrect IFSC or a name that does not match the PAN stops the credit without stopping the processing (CAclubindia, 2026).

The other silent reducer is Section 245. Where an earlier year carries an outstanding demand, the department may set your refund off against it after prior intimation. The refund then arrives smaller than expected, or not at all, and the intimation explaining why is easy to miss in a crowded inbox.

If nothing has moved after 60 to 90 days, confirm e-verification went through, check that the account reads "Validated", then file a grievance on the portal before escalating to CPC. Chasing at day 30 achieves nothing; chasing at day 90 with the right evidence usually does.

What should you do in August if you find an error?

File a revised return. It replaces the original with corrected figures and can be filed until 31 December 2026, and neither revising nor claiming a large refund "make one more likely to be selected for audit" (Business Today, 2026). Correcting an error is consistently treated better than ignoring it.

Where AIS itself is wrong, use the feedback facility on the portal rather than silently filing a different number — the feedback creates a record that explains the gap. Where TDS is missing, the fix sits with the deductor: the employer, bank or tenant has to correct the e-TDS statement, and no amount of correspondence with CPC substitutes for that.

One caution worth repeating. AIS and Form 26AS are not a complete statement of your income, and filing purely from them can leave income out. They are a cross-check, not a source document. If you missed the deadline entirely, our post on missing the ITR deadline under the staggered calendar sets out the 234F and 234A arithmetic, and the updated return route covers what remains available after 31 December.

If a notice has already landed, read what it actually asks for before responding — an intimation under 143(1) proposing an adjustment, a defect notice under 139(9) and a scrutiny notice under 143(2) need three different replies. Our income tax notice handling service drafts the response and assembles the evidence, and our salaried ITR filing service reconciles AIS, 26AS and TIS line by line before the return goes out — which is where this problem is cheapest to solve.