Finance and Corporate Affairs Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said on Monday that the new income tax portal would be fully functional in two to three days, with all the technical glitches marring the portal ironed out by the contractor Infosys.
Since its launch in early June, many critical functionalities of the tax portal have been non-starters, and the Minister admitted that there are ‘still some issues’ with it.
“Revenue Secretary [Tarun Bajaj] has been neutrally monitoring the progress on fixing the portal on a weekly basis. Nandan Nilekani [Infosys co-founder and chairman] keeps sending me messages saying: ‘This is where we are at’, ‘I assure you..’ and ‘we will sort it out.’ Hopefully, in another two-three days, it should be complete,” Ms. Sitharaman said, stressing that she had been pushing Infosys ‘not to let the taxpayers down’ with constant reminders.
Asked about talks with Cairn over settling the retrospective tax dispute, she said the Finance Ministry is in the final stages of notifying the rules related to the taxation law amendment to scrap the retrospective tax clause. “The critical features are already mentioned in the amendments, but the rules are yet to be notified,” she said, indicating that Cairn may only be expected to take a call on settling the dispute after that.
