I-T portal users still facing glitches
NEW DELHI: A week after the Income Tax Department’s much publicised new e-filing portal went live, users continued to face technical glitches ranging from longer than usual logging time, inability to respond to notices and not all features functioning yet, chartered accountants said on Monday.
The new portal was launched last Monday (June 7), which the tax department as well as the government said was aimed at making compliance more taxpayer-friendly.
But users complained of technical issues facing the site from the very first day and not everything has been fixed even after a week, chartered accountants (CAS) said, adding that taxpayers are unable to view past e-filed returns and many features/ facilities continue to be marked ‘coming soon’.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman herself had asked
Infosys—the vendor which created the portal—and its chairman Nandan Nilekani to fix the technical glitches.
A day after the launch of the Income Tax Department’s new tax filing portal, social media users had flagged glitches in the new e-filing portal 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.
Infosys was in 2019 awarded a contract to develop the nextgeneration income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds.
Nangia & Co LLP Partner Shailesh Kumar said starting from the struggle to login to the portal to important features such ‘e-proceedings’ tabs being unavailable with a message displayed ‘coming soon’ is creating anxiousness among the taxpayers and tax professionals with respect to orders being passed and non-compliance of notices without getting a sufficient opportunity to present a case.
Deloitte India Partner Aarti Raote said the new tax portal has raised expectations from all. However, many accessed the site felt it was slow and several existing features like were also not accessible.
“Users were faced with access and login challenges. The tax department has also indicated that the Digital Signature would need to be re-registered on account of security reasons,” Raote added.