New income tax portal glitches being resolved continuously, govt tells Lok Sabha

The central government has told the Lok Sabha that technical glitches in the new income tax e-filing portal are continuously being resolved by its software developer Infosys.

On a question related to glitches hounding the new income tax portal since its launch on June 7, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary noted that the Income Tax Department is continuously engaged with Infosys to expedite the resolution of any pending issues.

"The Department has taken corrective measures through Infosys based on feedback from taxpayers, tax professionals and representatives of ICAI [Institute of Chartered Accountants of India]. Infosys has informed that technical issues noticed in the functioning of the portal are continuously being resolved," the minister told the Lower House.

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. From January 2019 to June 2021, the government has paid ₹164.5 crore to Infosys for developing the portal.

Elaborating on the glitches seen in the portal, Chaudhary mentioned that most of the issues reported by tax payers pertain to non-availability or technical issues of certain functionalities or forms. Key functionalities are available to the taxpayers on the portal, he added.

"Certain key functionalities like user profile, dashboard, filing of ITR 1,2 & 4, e-proceedings including video conferencing requests, Digital Signing Certificate, viewing of old Income Tax returns, e-verification, e-PAN service, Aadhaar-PAN linking, Adding Authorised Representative, etc. are available to the users," Chaudhary said.

In another part of the question related to the streamlining GST mechanism, Chaudhary said that while the framework does not pertain to claims of drawback. However, GST mechanism for claim of refund by exporters is a streamlined process, he added.