Income Tax portal’s technical glitches to be resolved soon: FM Sitharaman

Mukesh Ranjan
Tribune News Service
New Delhi, July 28

As the taxpayers and professionals continue to suffer because of the technical glitches in the new portal of the Income Tax department, Union Minister for Finance Nirmala Sitharaman said on Wednesday that she wished the Infosys-developed website hadn’t such a launch but insisted that she hoped issues will be sorted out soon, as the technical team of the software company with representatives of Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) is on the job.

Noting that Infosys had done trial runs before the June 7 launch but users faced technical issues in accessing the portal, the Minister said, “I wish it had not happened this way. But we are correcting the course and soon the portal will be as planned, easy to use”.

The new income tax e-filing portal www.incometax.gov.in had a bumpy start from the day of its launch on June 7, as it continued to face tech glitches, which sources in the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT termed them as “teething trouble”.

The sources in the CBDT said, the department is expecting that tech issues of the portal would be resolved soon and the website will function normally by mid-August.

Sitharaman said her ministry along with Infosys had done trial runs before launching the portal but still users experienced “quite a lot of difficulties” after its launch. “Infosys is quite closely working with the ICAI and the ministry and rapidly, at least from what I hear from chartered accountants and income tax professionals, there is definitely a lot of improvement,” she added.

Infosys was in 2019 awarded a contract to develop the next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds. The government has so far paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys between January 2019 and June 2021 for developing the portal.

Sitharaman had on June 22 called a meeting with key officials of Infosys to review the issues on the portal. In the meeting, the ICAI members highlighted the issues faced by taxpayers and tax professionals on the portal.

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