NEW DELHI: Faced with widespread criticism over tech glitches in the new Income Tax (I-T) e-filing portal, the Finance Ministry has asked the developer of the portal Infosys to fix the bugs by June 30.
Senior officials of the ministry will also hold a meeting with Infosys representatives on June 22 to discuss the issue. Other stakeholders, including Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), auditors, consultants and taxpayers will also be a part of the interaction.
"Representatives from Infosys team will be present to answer queries, clarify issues and receive inputs on the working of the portal, to remove glitches and sort out issues faced by the taxpayers," the finance ministry said in a statement on Tuesday.
Software major Infosys was in 2019 awarded a contract to develop the next-generation I-T filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds. The much-advertised new portal was designed by Infosys at a cost of over Rs 6,000 crore.
Ever since its launch on June 7, however, the new e-filing portal has been experiencing numerous technical glitches. Despite a 1,000-page note on how to use the new portal effectively, both taxpayers and tax professionals have pointed out various difficulties in performing different tasks on the website.
Users have complained that the website is working very slowly and even small things like updating of profile, changing of passwords are taking a lot of time. Some users are finding it difficult to file TDS returns, while newly incorporated entities are unable to register.
Some have pointed out that the 'forgot password' option is not working. According to tax professionals, the entire section for 'e-proceedings' under the tab 'pending actions' is still not live. The glitches forced the I-T department to defer the compliances dates with regards to foreign remittances for submission of Form 15CA and 15CB.