Fix tax portal glitches by Sept 15: Finance Ministry warns Infosys

A day after the Ministry of Finance summoned Infosys chief executive Salil Parekh to explain the glitches in the new income tax e-filing portal, the Bengaluru-headquartered firm has been asked to fix the issues by September 15.

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met Parekh at her office in New Delhi and sought to know why the company could not fix the glitches even after two-and-a-half months since its launch.

Sitharaman has asked Infosys to fix all the issues by September 15. Reports say Parekh and his team had given the ministry a roadmap on the whole issue.

Parekh said 750 team members are working on the tax portal and Infosys COO Pravin Rao is personally monitoring the project.

A statement issued by the Income Tax Department said that during the meeting, the Finance Minister 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.

Also read: New Income Tax e-filing portal: Know the salient features

“Honble 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,” the I-T department said in a statement after the meeting.

Sitharaman, the statement said, conveyed “the deep disappointment and concerns of the government and the taxpayers” about the continuing glitches in the e-filing portal.

The portal, which went live on June 7, was not accessible on August 21 and 22 till late evening. It came back after what the tech major described as “emergency maintenance”. This is the second time that Sitharaman has met the Infosys team over the issue.

She had on June 22 met Parekh and Rao. Infosys was awarded the Rs 4,242-crore contract in 2019 to develop the new portal.

The project was aimed at developing the next-generation tax-filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and also expedite refunds.

Between January 2019 and June 2021, the government has paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys to develop the portal.

The new income tax e-filing portal www.incometax.gov.in, however, faced tech glitches from day one with users complaining that certain functionalities were either unavailable or working slow.

Consequently, the I-T department had to allow the manual filing of remittance forms and also extend due dates for electronic filing of forms related to intimation by pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.