Irked by Glitches in New I-T Portal Even After 2.5 Months, Govt Calls Infosys CEO as Taxpayers Fret

The Ministry of Finance has summoned Salil Parekh, MD and CEO of Infosys, to seek an explanation about why glitches in the new income tax filing portal have not been resolved, an issue flagged by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

The new income tax portal ‘www.incometax.gov.in’, which went live on June 7, had a bumpy start since its launch as it continued to face tech glitches including longer logging in time, inability to generate OTP for Aadhaar validation, non-availability of ITRs for past years. Taking note of the grievances voiced on social media by taxpayers, tax professionals and other stakeholders, the Finance Minister had pointed out the issues to Infosys, calling upon them to address these concerns.

She asked Infosys to work on the portal to make it more humane and user-friendly and expressed her deep concern on the various problems being faced by the stakeholders.

Infosys India, meanwhile, in a tweet said they would post an update once the portal is back.

Late on Sunday, Infosys said the emergency maintenance on the website has concluded and it is now live. Infosys India Business tweeted: “The emergency maintenance of the @IncomeTaxIndia portal has concluded and the portal is live. We regret any inconvenience caused to taxpayers.”

The Income Tax Department had said the new portal was aimed at making compliance more taxpayer-friendly, however the technical glitches shall be addressed fast, for convenience of all.

Infosys in 2019 was 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.

Addressing shareholders’ questions on the matter, Infosys said it is deeply concerned with the inconvenience caused by the technical glitches in the new income tax e-filing portal, and that it is working to resolve all the issues at the earliest. “Infosys is working to resolve the concerns in the new income tax e-filing portal. For the last week, several of the technology glitches, which impacted the performance and stability, have been addressed. And as a result, we have observed lakhs of unique daily users in the portal,” said Infosys Chief Operating Officer Pravin Rao while responding to queries during the AGM.

Answering a shareholder’s question, Rao informed that close to one lakh income tax returns have been filed so far on the portal. Ahead of Tuesday’s meeting with Infosys, the Finance Ministry had on June 16 invited written representations from stakeholders regarding glitches or issues faced on the new income tax e-filing portal.

Tax consultants have submitted their representations pertaining to technical and performance issues, issues of missing data, modules which are not working. Some consultants have also suggested that the old e-filing portal should remain active till the time the new portal stabilises and in the meantime beta testing be carried out to resolve the issues faced by users. 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.

Sitharaman herself had on June 8 asked Infosys and its Chairman Nandan Nilekani to fix the technical glitches. A day after the launch of the new portal, social media users had flagged glitches in the new e-filing portal to the finance minister.

Following that, Sitharaman took to Twitter and asked Infosys and its chairman to fix the problem. Replying to the tweet, Nilekani had said Infosys is working to fix the glitches.

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