Hon'ble Finance Minister Smt. Nirmala Sitaraman met Mr Salil Parekh MD & CEO of Infosys on 23rd August 2021 and conveyed the deep disappointment and concerns of the government and taxpayers about continuing glitches in the new e-filing portal of the Income Tax Department. While seeking an explanation from Infosys, Finance Minister demanded that the issues be fixed by 15th September 2021. The income-tax department informed this in a press release.
Earlier, on 22nd August 2021, the income-tax department has informed that the Ministry of Finance has summoned Shri Salil Parekh, MD & CEO of Infosys on 23rd August 2021 to explain to the Hon'ble Finance Minister as to why even after 2.5 months since the launch of the new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved. In fact, since 21st August 2021 the portal itself was not available.
The portal was made available on the evening of 22nd August after it was down for emergency maintenance.
In the meeting, Mr Parekh explained that he & his team of over 750 members were doing everything to ensure the smooth functioning of the portal. He assured Hon’ble FM that Infosys is working expeditiously to ensure a glitch-free experience for taxpayers on the portal.
Readers are aware that the new e-filing portal was launched on 7th June 2021 and the new portal is being developed by Infosys. However, the new portal was full of glitches and taxpayers were not getting the same smooth experience as was available in the old e-filing portal. The new portal has been fraught with several technical glitches and issues leading to taxpayer inconvenience.
To fix the glitches in the new e-filing portal, Finance Ministry held a meeting with Infosys and tax professionals on 22nd June 2021.
Further, due to the non-availability and non-working of certain forms on the new portal, the government has allowed the taxpayers to manually file Form 15CA/15CB.
ICAI has also constituted a task force of 7 representatives to look into the technical glitches/issues being faced on the new Income Tax portal.
Now, Infosys has been given time to fix the glitches by September 15, 2021, whereas the extended time to file the return of income for individuals and other non-tax audit cases is 30th September 2021. Hence, literally, taxpayers have 15 days time within which they have to file their return of income. There is no corresponding release of any press note or announcement that extends the due date for filing of return of income for the AY 2021-22. However, it is expected that government will come out with a notification to extend all the due dates of compliance under the Income-tax Act due to severe technical glitches of the new e-filing portal which the government has also acknowledged and raised concerns.
Read the full text of the Press Release dated 23.08.2021 on Finance Ministry meeting with Infosys on technical glitches of the new e-filing portal
Finance Ministry meeting with Infosys on glitches in e-filing portal of Income Tax Department
Union Minister for Finance & Corporate Affairs Smt. Nirmala Sitharaman took a meeting with Mr. Salil Parekh, MD & CEO, Infosys here today afternoon to convey the deep disappointment and concerns of the Government and the taxpayers about the continuing glitches in the e-filing portal of the Income Tax Department even after two and half months since its launch, which was also delayed. Smt. Sitharaman sought an explanation from Infosys for the repeated issues faced by taxpayers.
The Ministry of Finance 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 ensured. Mr. 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 portal.
The 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.
Mr Parekh explained that he and his team are doing everything to ensure the smooth functioning of the portal. Further, Mr Parekh said that over 750 team members are working on this project and Mr Pravin Rao COO of Infosys, is personally overseeing this project. Mr Parekh also assured that Infosys is working expeditiously to ensure a glitch-free experience to the taxpayers on the portal.
Download Copy of Press Release dated 23.08.2021 on Finance Ministry meeting with Infosys on technical glitches of the new e-filing portal in pdf format
1 Comments
As of now the only place to receive and process grievances and complaints of income tax payers is cusomer service of Income Tax Department. These people are probaly already flooded with millions of complaints and feedback. They cannot even tabulate or organise so many complaints leave aside solving the technical problems and software glitches. It would be in the best interest of INFOSYS (if they want to survive) to assign a large no of their staff to directly receive feedback from tax-payers and then advise their sofware staff to solve the problems one-by-one. They should publish their e-mail IDs to receive complaints. Income Tax Diary should convey this to ITD and CBDT.
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