New Income-Tax portal: Finance Ministry to meet Infosys officials next week

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New Delhi: Finance ministry officials will meet representatives of Infosys on June 22 to discuss issues and glitches in the new income tax e-filing portal as users continue to face inconvenience even after a week of its launch.

Members from ICAI, auditors, consultants and taxpayers will also be part of the interactive meeting, during which the Infosys team will answer queries, clarify issues and receive inputs on the working of the portal, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a statement on Tuesday.

“Senior officials of the Ministry of Finance will be holding an interactive meeting on the 22nd of June, 2021 between 11:00 AM to 01:00 PM with Infosys (the vendor and its team) on issues/ glitches in the recently launched e-filing portal of the Income Tax Department.

“Other stakeholders including members from ICAI, auditors, consultants and taxpayers will also be part of the interaction,” it said.

ICAI is the apex body of chartered accountants.

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

“The new portal has been fraught with several technical glitches/ issues leading to taxpayer inconvenience. Written representations on the problems/ difficulties faced in the portal have also been invited from the stakeholders.

“Representatives from Infosys team will be present to answer queries, clarify issues and receive inputs on the working of the portal, to remove glitches and sort out issues faced by the taxpayers,” CBDT said in the statement.

The new portal, ‘http://www.incometax.gov.in”www.incometax.gov.in’, was launched on June 7, with the IT Department as well as the government saying it was aimed at making compliance more taxpayer-friendly.

Users complained of technical issues while using the site from the very first day and not everything has been fixed even after a week, chartered accountants had said, adding that taxpayers were 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 and its Chairman Nandan Nilekani to fix the technical glitches.

A day after the launch of the portal, social media users had flagged glitches to the finance minister. The minister 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.

In 2019, Infosys was 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.