The Inland Revenue Board (IRB) will settle all refunds to taxpayers by December this year, including those outstanding from previous years.

IRB Chief executive office Hasmah Abdullah said a special task force was set up early this year in every state to concentrate solely on getting the refunds out.

“Previously, we did not have a special task force and the officers in charge of the refunds also had other things to do. The task force will ensure that refunds are processed quickly”.

“My mission is tho ensure that there will be no more backlog of refunds carried forward into the next year, including refunds for 2006.” she told reporters here yesterday.

Hasmah said that they aimed to give out e-filing refunds for the 2006 assessment year by the end of this month while refunds for those who submitted paper-filind and backlogged cases would be given out by the end of this year.

“We are aware that there are refunds still from the previous years and we are working round the clock to ensure that they are reimbursed quickly.” she said.

She added that there were about 20,000 backlog cases for the 2004/2005 assessment year.

Hasmah said 70% of refunds - the majority of which was for e-filing - had already been processed for the 2006 tax year while 53% of refunds from backlog cases (2005 and before) had already been reimbursed.

“Until now, refunds (for 2006) where issues to 218,823 taxpayers totalling RM2.96bil within one to three months.”

“Of the figure, 18,781 were company tax payers” she said, adding that between 80% and 90% of refunds for the Klang Valley had been completed.”

She said for this year alone, 2,300 refund cheques for RM8.7mil were not cashed or returned compared to the 8,600 uncashed cheques for RM15mil last year.

Hasmah said they were in the midst of hiring more people to overcome the shortage of staff and had received more than 20,000 applications for more than 300 vacancies.

She said there were delays in some refunds due to the incomplete forms, errors in decimal points and system glitches.

“Some cases were not yet solved because the forms were not complete or had errors - they were not signed or the reference or identity card numbers were missing” she said.

hasmah said some also erroneously included decimal points for some income amounts although the computer system did not not recognise them, thus complicating calculations.

She said some e-Filing refunds for the 2006 tax year were delayed as “60% to 70% of e-filing was submitted in the last week of the April 20 deadline”

“We are improving our system, and in some cases e-filing refunds were given out within a week.” she said, adding that refund priority would be given to senior citizens.

She urged those who had yet the receive their outstanding refunds for 2005 and earlier to e-mail her at hasmah@hasil.org.my.