I-T portal glitches: FM sets Sept 15 as deadline for Infosys to resolve issues

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Monday conveyed to Infosys CEO Salil Parekh in no uncertain terms the governments deep disappointment and concern over the continuing glitches in the new income tax filing portal and set September 15 as the deadline for the software major to resolve all snagsAs glitches continued to mar the functioning of the portal even after over two months of its launch Sitharaman summoned Infosys MD amp CEO Parekh at her office here to know the reasons for not resolving the snags in the portalA statement issued by the Income Tax Department said that during the meeting the finance minister emphasised that there is a need for putting in more resources and efforts on the part of Infosys so that the much delayed delivery of agreed services is ensuredHonble Finance Minister demanded that the issues faced by taxpayers on current functionalities of the portal should be resolved by the team by 15th September 2021 so that taxpayers and professionals can work seamlessly on the portal the IT department said in a statement after the meetingAlso ReadIT efiling portal now live after emergency maintenance InfosysSitharaman the statement said conveyed the deep disappointment and concerns of the government and the taxpayers about the continuing glitches in the efiling portalShe sought an explanation from Infosys for the repeated issues faced by taxpayers it addedDuring the meeting Parekh was also sensitised on the difficulties that the taxpayers were facing and the problems that are arising on account of the delays in the functioning of the portalParekh explained that he and his team are doing everything to ensure the smooth functioning of the portal Further he said over 750 team members are working on this project and Pravin Rao COO of Infosys is personally overseeing this project He also assured that Infosys is working expeditiously to ensure a glitchfree experience to the taxpayers on the portal the statement addedThe portal which went live on June 7 was not accessible on August 21 and 22 till late evening It came back after what the tech major described was an emergency maintenanceThis is the second time that Sitharaman has met the Infosys team over the issue She had on June 22 met Parekh and RaoInfosys was awarded the Rs 4242 crore contract in 2019 to develop the new portal The project was aimed at developing the nextgeneration income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and also expedite refunds Between January 2019 to June 2021 the government has paid Rs 1645 crore to Infosys for developing the portalThe new income tax efiling portal wwwincometaxgovin however faced tech glitches from day one with users complaining that certain functionalities were either unavailable or working slowConsequently the IT department had to allow the manual filing of remittance forms and also extend due dates for electronic filing of forms related to intimation by pension funds and sovereign wealth fundsShiv Sena MP Priyanka Chaturvedi in a tweet said its been two months since the IT portal was launched and yet no resolution has been found to resolve the problems How does summoning amp castigating the CEO become PR material for finance ministry Nothing but a mighty embarrassment for a country talking of Aatmanirbhar amp Digital BharatPHDCCI Chair Direct Tax Committee Mukul Bagla said India has around 7 crore persons or entities who file their income tax returns Due to glitches in the income tax portal their day to day functioning has been adversely affected since June 7Taxpayers are unable to download documents filed earlier with the income tax department or file their income tax returns for ay 202122 if they opt for new rates us 115BAC The assessee is not able to file returns pursuant to notice us 148 file reply to penalty proceedings etc Many other important tax functions have been affected he saidIn the absence of a fully functional income tax portal either we suspend all income tax proceedings till it is functional and further extend due dates of filing ITR otherwise the life of the tax payer as well as the tax professional is very miserable Bagla addedThis story has been sourced from a third party syndicated feed agencies Midday accepts no responsibility or liability for its dependability trustworthiness reliability and data of the text Midday managementmiddaycom reserves the sole right to alter delete or remove without notice the content in its absolute discretion for any reason whatsoever