Nirmala Sitharaman, the Union Finance Minister, stated on Monday that the new Income Tax Portal which is under the development stage by the IT giant Infosys will be completely restored in the coming days. She went on to say in her statement that “I have been reminding Infosys which developed the new portal constantly, and Co-founder of Infosys Nandan Nilekani has been messaging me with assurances that in the next couple of days they will sort out the majority of problems,” according to the Times of India.
”We believe to a large extent the tax portal issues have been resolved but some issues still remain,” the Finance Minister said adding that Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj was monitoring the situation on a weekly basis.
The government had asked Nandan Nilekani and Infosys team to be present to engage with stakeholders including the chartered accountants and tax experts to resolve the issues in the new tax portal.
The new income tax e-filing portal ‘www.incometax.gov.in’ had a bumpy start from the day of its launch on 7 June as it continued to face tech glitches.
IT company 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.
The Centre has so far paid ₹164.5 crore to Infosys between January 2019 to June 2021 for developing the e-filing portal.
Finance Minister had on 22 June called a meeting with key officials of Infosys to review the issues on the portal. In the meeting, the ICAI members highlighted the issues faced by taxpayers and tax professionals on the portal.
From the day of its debut on 7 June, the new income tax e-filing platform ‘www.incometax.gov.in’ had a difficult initiation due to technical issues. On June 8-2021, Nandan Nilekani had said that “The new e-filing portal will ease the filing process and enhance the end-user experience. We have observed some technical issues on day one, and are working to resolve them. Infosys regrets these initial glitches and expects the system to stabilize during the week.”
“Going back to the old portal will add more challenges. The new tax portal has more benefits for the assessees”, she added.
