India’s Ministry of Finance summoned Infosys chief executive Salil Parekh on August 23 regarding glitches in the new income tax portal. In a tweet, Income Tax department noted that since August 21, the portal was not even available. The server had been down due to a planned maintenance. Infosys on Sunday shared an update that an emergency maintenance of the portal was concluded, and that it was live.
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Finance ministry officials held meetings with Parekh on Monday to discuss issues plaguing the tax portal. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman asked Infosys to explain the reason for continuing glitches and ordered the company to resolve them on the income tax e-filing website by September 15.
What is the new income tax portal?
The Income Tax Department’s new income tax e-filing portal was launched on June 7 to ease the tax filing process and issue quick refunds to taxpayers. The website was touted as a ‘taxpayer-friendly portal’ that will display interactions, uploads and pending requests on a single dashboard.
Besides, it was to be equipped with (Income Tax Returns) ITR preparation software, interactive questions and a call centre to help taxpayers with queries related to filing tax returns. The contract for developing the website was given to Infosys in January 2019.
What are the issues?
The objective of the new portal was to bring down the processing time of returns from 63 days to a single day and expedite returns but since the launch, taxpayers have been facing multiple issues accessing and using the portal. This includes failure to generate passwords and OTP for Aadhar validation, inability to link old data for past returns, incorrect capturing of details, incorrect interest calculation, lagged loading of the website and many more. People also complained that their ITR-1 was not accepted days after submission.
Due to problems with the e-filing portal, the government had to extend the deadlines for filing returns. For instance, the due date for filing ITR for taxpayers not covered under audit was extended to September 30 while those under tax audit were given a new due date of November 30.
Timeline of follow ups
The new website has faced hiccups for more than two and a half months now. Sitharaman pointed to a glitch on the portal the day after the launch. In a tweet tagged Infosys founder Nandan Nilekani, and said there were glitches in the new e-filing portal. She added that ease in compliance for the taxpayer should be the priority. Nilekani replied that Infosys was working to resolve the issues and the initial glitches will be stabilised during the week. Cut to late August, complaints have continued and the I-T department tweeted regarding the summoning of Salil Parekh.
Sitharaman held a meeting with Infosys officials on June 22 where both Parekh and COO Pravin Rao were present. She asked them to resolve the issues and address all grievances. Infosys had then noted that it will fix a few issues related to ITR within a week.
Last week, Sitharaman said glitches are expected to be fixed in the next few days. “The glitches on the new Income Tax portal are expected to be fixed entirely in the next couple of days. I have been reminding Infosys constantly and Nandan Nilekani is giving me assurances that they will sort it out," she said.
Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary in a written reply to Lok Sabha noted that Infosys has been paid ₹164.5 crores from January 2019 to June 2021 to develop the portal.
The other high profile e-governance projects executed by Infosys including the the Ministry of Corporate Affairs’ MCA21 v2 portal and IT infrastructure for the GST Network have also experienced serious problems at the outset.
