Income Tax Portal – Finance Ministry SUMMONS Infosys MD & CEO Salil Parekh on prevailing glitches; e-portal issues NOT RESOLVED even after 2.5 months, says IT department tweet

Income Tax Portal - Indian Ministry of Finance has summoned Salil Parekh, the Managing Director (MD) and Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of Infosys on 23 August to seek explanation regarding the prevailing glitches in the new income tax portal, an official Twitter Handle of Income Tax India @IncomeTaxIndia said.

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Ministry of Finance has summoned Sh Salil Parekh,MD&CEO @Infosys on 23/08/2021 to explain to hon'ble FM as to why even after 2.5 months since launch of new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved. In fact,since 21/08/2021 the portal itself is not available.

— Income Tax India (@IncomeTaxIndia) August 22, 2021

“Ministry of Finance has summoned Sh Salil Parekh, MD & CEO @Infosys on 23/08/2021 to explain to hon'ble FM as to why even after 2.5 months since launch of new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved. In fact, since 21/08/2021 the portal itself is not available,” the tweet said.

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Finance Ministry will be seeking a response from the Infosys MD and CEO on why even after 2.5 months since launch of new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved.

The income tax portal www.Incometax.Gov was launched on June 7 and it has continued to face glitches, including longer logging in time, inability to generate OTP for Aadhaar validation, non-availability of ITRs for past years according to a PTI report.

A day after the launch of the new 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.

Earlier on 22 June 2021, the Finance Ministry had called a meeting with Infosys officials to discuss about the glitches in the new income tax portal and gather feedback from external shareholders to fix them.

Several stakeholders have submitted written inputs highlighting the issues facing the portal as well as areas that need to be fixed. Also, present during the meeting, Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) representatives highlighted the issues faced by taxpayers and tax professionals on the portal.

The ICAI in a statement issued after the meeting said that it has been asked to provide its continuous support and inputs to CBDT and Infosys, in resolving the issues, as early as possible.

The stakeholders have also highlighted weak user interface, inability to view old demand, grievances and intimation orders as the issues that need to be fixed, a PTI report said.

During its launch, the Income Tax Department had said that the new portal was aimed at making compliance more taxpayer-friendly.

This is the portal that common income taxpayers will also use to file their annual returns for 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.

At the company's annual shareholder meeting, Infosys had stated that it was working to resolve the issues and has already succeeded on some fronts, this PTI report said.

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.

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

Inputs from PTI