FinMin, Infosys to meet on Tuesday, discuss glitches in new I-T portal

Two weeks since the much talked about new income tax return filing portal was launched, technical glitches continue to mar the site, an issue finance ministry officials will take up in a meeting with Infosys -- the vendor which provided the IT solution -- at a meeting on Tuesday.

Several stakeholders have submitted written inputs highlighting the issues facing the portal as well as areas that need to be fixed.

At the company's annual shareholder meeting, Infosys had on Saturday stated that it is working to resolve the issues and has already succeeded on some fronts.

Addressing shareholders' questions on the matter, Infosys said it is deeply concerned with the inconvenience caused by the technical glitches in the new income tax e-filing portal, and it is working to resolve all the issues at the earliest.

"Infosys is working to resolve the concerns in the new income tax e-filing portal. For the last week, several of the technology glitches, which impacted the performance and stability, have been addressed. And as a result, we have observed lakhs of unique daily users in the portal," said Infosys Chief Operating Officer Pravin Rao while responding to queries during the AGM.

Answering a shareholder's question, Rao informed that close to one lakh income tax returns have been filed so far on the portal.

However, stakeholders, in response to the finance ministry's invitation for comments last week, highlighted continued glitches such as inability to view past e-filed returns, longer loading time of the web page, weak user interface and inability to view old demand, grievances and intimation orders.

The e-filing portal, www.incometax.gov.in, was launched on June 7. The tax department as well as the government said it was aimed at making compliance more taxpayer-friendly.

This is the portal that common income tax payers will also use to file their annual returns for the assessment year 2021-22, for income earned in financial year 2020-21. The last date for filing of such returns by individual taxpayers is September 30.

However, the portal continued to face glitches and users complained of technical issues facing the site.

Following this, the finance ministry had on June 16 invited written representations from stakeholders regarding glitches or issues faced on the new income tax e-filing portal.

These representations would also be discussed in the meeting of finance ministry officials with Infosys representatives on June 22. The meeting would also be attended by members from ICAI, auditors and consultants.

Tax consultants have submitted their representations pertaining to technical and performance issues, including missing data and modules which are not working.

Some consultants have also suggested that the old e-filing portal should remain active till the time the new portal stabilises and in the meantime, beta testing be carried out to resolve the issues faced by users.

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.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman herself had on June 8 asked Infosys and its Chairman Nandan Nilekani to fix the technical glitches.

A day after the launch of the new tax filing portal, social media users flagged glitches in the site to the finance minister.

Following that, Sitharaman took to Twitter and asked Infosys and its chairman to fix the problem.

Replying to the tweet, Nilekani had said Infosys is working to fix the glitches.