The new site, “https://www.incometax.gov.in/”www.incometax.gov.in, was unveiled last Monday (June 7), which the tax department as well as the government stated was aimed at making compliance more taxpayer-friendly. A week after the Income Tax Department’s widely heralded new e-filing system went live, customers continued to suffer technological issues ranging from longer than usual logging time, inability to reply to notices and not all features operating yet, chartered accountants said on Monday.
But customers complained of technical challenges facing the site from the very first day and not everything has been solved even after a week, chartered accountants (CAs) stated, adding that taxpayers are unable to examine past e-filed returns and many features/ facilities continue to be labelled ‘coming soon’.
A day after the inauguration of the Income Tax Department’s new tax filing online, social media users had identified flaws in the new e-filing facility to the finance minister. Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman herself had instructed Infosys — the vendor which designed the platform – and its Chairman Nandan Nilekani to resolve the technological faults.
Following that, Sitharaman took to Twitter and asked Infosys and its chairman to solve the matter. Replying to the tweet, Nilekani had said Infosys is working to solve the faults.
Infosys was in 2019 granted a contract to construct the next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds.
According to several CAs, everything from the difficulty of logging into the portal to critical features such as the ‘e-proceedings’ tabs being unavailable with a message stating ‘coming soon’ is creating anxiety among taxpayers and tax professionals about orders being issued and non-compliance with notices without a sufficient opportunity to present a case.
There is something odd about the timing of the new launch, given that the advance tax deadline is just around the horizon and the deadline for completing assessments is the end of the month, which has been delayed numerous times owing to the pandemic and now the timing of this malfunction.
Rather than being user-friendly, the new IT site is currently proving to be a nightmare, owing to the early difficulties encountered by taxpayers even after one week of implementation. The most frequently encountered issues on the portal over the last week include: login taking 10-15 minutes, inability to file responses to assessment notices, data from previous filings not visible on the portal, and the e-proceedings module not fully functional.
Taxpayers may be subject to penalties for circumstances beyond their control. Additionally, taxpayers face significant difficulties remitting cash abroad due to their inability to issue Form 15CA/CB. Even after a week of operation, the aforementioned issues are not insignificant and require prompt attention/resolution.
Even something as simple as resetting your password can take several minutes. The many forms required to file applications for reduced withholding and approvals for 281 are difficult to locate. The data from previous rectifications and other submissions on the previous e-portal does not reflect and generates an error message
Smrutirekha Bhoi