Income Tax e-filing new portal continues to face glitches
One week after the Income Tax Department’s most famous new e-filing portal had gone life; many users have continued to be facing lots of technical glitches that are ranging from longer than the usual logging time, with the problem of not being able to respond to the notices and that not all the features are completely functioning yet, said the Chartered Accountants as of Monday.
The new website, for Income Tax e-filing, “https://www.incometax.gov.in/”www.incometax.gov.in, was launched on the internet on June 7th, which the income tax department and the government as well stated that this was made to be more taxpayer-friendly. However, the users had complained of several technical issues that they were facing on the site from the first day and that even after a week, nothing had been fixed or updated, stated the Chartered Accountants. They also added on to the same that the taxpayers are not able to view more than the e-filed returns, and most of the features are constantly being marked as ‘coming soon.
Nirmala Sitharaman, the Finance Minister, had directly asked Infosys- the vendors that created the portal and Chairman Nandan Nilekani to fix the technical problems. Just one day after the launch of the Income Tax Department’s new Income Tax e-filing, the social media users had raised flags regarding the issues in the new e-filing portal to the finance minister. 
After this, Sitharaman took this to Twitter and had asked Infosys and the chairman to fix the issue.
Answering the following tweet, Nilekani had answered that Infosys is currently working towards fixing the current problems.
In 2019, Infosys was awarded this contract to continue to develop the next-generation Income Tax e-filing system to reduce the processing time for the returns, which was 63 days to one day and then expedite the refunds.
Shailesh Kumar, the Partner of Nangia & Co LLP, stated that from the beginning of the struggle to log in on the portal to try out the most important features such as the ‘proceedings table that are unavailable along with a message which is displayed stating ‘coming soon that is creating the anxiousness amongst the taxpayers and the tax professionals with respect to the orders that are being passed and non-compliance of the notices without getting sufficient opportunities to present the case.
“The taxpayers could face penalty consequences for reasons beyond their control. Also, taxpayers are facing a major challenge for remitting funds abroad as they are unable to issue Form 15CA/ CB. Even after one week of going live, the aforesaid are not minor glitches and require immediate attention/ resolution,” Kumar said. The launch of this new IT portal has become a nightmare more than it being user friendly because of the current glitches that are being faced by the taxpayers even after one week of rolling, he stated.
The Senior Partner of the AMRG & Associates, Rajat Mohan, had stated that the common issues that are frequently faced on the new Income Tax e-filing portal since the last week include the login that is taking around 10-15 minutes, where the individual is unable to file the responses for the assessment notices, the data related to the previous filings that are not shown on the portal, e-proceedings module that is not fully functional.
“New Income Tax e-filing portal needs to be fixed at the earliest; numerous errors and glitches are causing inconvenience for the taxpayers and tax professionals,” Mohan added.
Aarti Raote, the Partner of Deloitte India, stated that this new Income Tax e-filing portal has now raised the expectations of all the people. But, many of them who accessed the site felt that it was very slow and had several features that are currently existent but not accessible to all.
“Users were faced with access and login challenges. The tax department has also indicated that the Digital Signature would need to be re-registered on account of security reasons. Thus benefits of the new Income Tax e-filing portal would be seen when these initial glitches are addressed,” Raote added.
The LLP Partner Sandeep Bhalla of Dhruva Advisors had stated that the classification interface of the new website seemed to be very user friendly with the user manuals for each type of the users, but the website as a whole is quite slow and takes a lot of time for the smallest things like updating the profile details, etc.
“A basic thing such as changing a password could take several minutes. The various forms required to be filed for lower withholding applications and approvals for 281 are difficult to find. The data of earlier rectifications etc., filed on the earlier Income Tax e-filing portal does not reflect and throws up error messages,” Bhalla added.
There are sometimes where individual wonders about the timing of the new launch where the advance tax timing was approaching and the deadline for the assessment completion is scheduled at the end of the month that has been extended multiple times only because of the pandemic and the timing of this glitch.
