The Finance Ministry has called a meeting with the vendor of the new Income Tax e-filing portal, Infosys, on June 22. The portal www.incometax.gov.in has been in the news due to glitches and complaints from users since it went on June 8.
“Senior officials of the Ministry of Finance will be holding an interactive meeting on the 22nd of June, 2021 between 11:00 AM to 01:00 PM with Infosys (the vendor and its team) on issues/glitches in the recently launched e-filing portal of the Income Tax Department,” Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), said in a statement. CBDT is the apex policy-making body for Income Tax and Corporate Tax under the Finance Ministry.
Members from Institute of Chartered Accounts (ICAI), auditors, consultants and taxpayers will also be part of this meeting. The new portal has been fraught with several technical glitches/issues leading to taxpayer inconvenience. Written representations of the problems/difficulties faced in the portal have also been invited from the stakeholders. “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 statement said.
Within hours of the launch of the new portal June 7, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman used the microblogging site to ask Infosys and its non-executive Chairman Nandan Nilekani not to let down taxpayers. She said: “I see in my TL (Timeline) grievances and glitches. Hope @Infosys & @NandanNilekani will not let down our taxpayers in the quality of service being provided. Ease in compliance for the taxpayer should be our priority.”
Later Nilekani responded and said: The new e-filing portal will ease the filing process and enhance the end-user experience. @nsitharamanji, 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 stabilise during the week.” Following this, Infosys also said that its teams are making progress in addressing the technical issues, and it expects the system to stabilise this week.
This is not the first time Infosys developed tax portal in news for the wrong reason. Earlier, there were a lot of issues with the GST portal. This brought the non-Executive Chairman of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani, to prepare a detailed presentation before the GST Council and present a timeline for better services including new facilities.