Finance ministry invites stakeholders’ representations on income tax portal glitches

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New Delhi: The finance ministry on Wednesday invited written representations from stakeholders regarding glitches and issues on the new income tax e-filing portal.

The deadline for submission of the representations is June 18.

The representations would also be discussed during a meeting of senior finance ministry officials with Infosys representatives on June 22.

“Written representations are invited regarding the issues/ glitches on the new Income Tax Portal on the email address fmo@nic.in latest by 7 PM on Friday, June 18, 2021,” the Office of Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman said in a tweet.

The portal was launched on June 7. The government as the well as the Income Tax Department have said the portal was aimed at making compliance more taxpayer-friendly.

Users have complained of technical issues on the site from the very first day and that not everything has been fixed even after a week. Taxpayers are unable to view past e-filed returns and many features/ facilities continue to be marked ‘coming soon’, chartered accountants had said earlier this week.

Finance ministry officials will be holding a meeting with Infosys representatives on June 22. The meeting will also be attended by members from ICAI, auditors, consultants and taxpayers.

During the meeting, Infosys team will answer queries, clarify issues and receive inputs on the working of the portal, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said on Tuesday.

As taxpayers continued to face issues on the portal, the IT Department on Monday eased certain norms for filing up tax forms for remittances by allowing manual filings.

On June, Sitharaman 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 portal, social media users had flagged glitches on 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 next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds.