The year 2021 has witnessed radical changes in the Indian income tax configuration. One of them is the introduction of the new income tax portal. On June 7 with abundant hullabaloo the refurbished income tax portal has been hurled by the Income Tax department. However, the gateway remained unreachable for the better section on its debut day. Almost thirty days later, nothing has altered, and taxpayers are progressively becoming impatient.
In May 2021 while publicizing the launching of its new e-filing portal http://www.incometax.gov.in, the Income Tax department mentioned that the new portal will be a “taxpayer-friendly portal.” The department also stated that the new portal will facilitate the processing of Income Tax Returns and help in issuing rapid refunds to taxpayers, with all communications and uploads or unresolved activities to be shown on a single dashboard. Additionally, the department stated that to assist the taxpayers the software for preparing the tax return will be incorporated on the portal along with a new call centre for quick reaction to inquiries.
Infosys’ new innings: The prime reason for introducing the new portal was to have a gateway with elementary configuration and easy use. Therefore, the government entrusted the task to tech giant Infosys. In 2019 the entity was given the contract to develop the new income tax portal, replenishing the old one, in a proposal to decrease the processing tenure from 63 days to one day for a total expenditure of Rs 4,200 crore.
Unfortunately, a few hours after the introduction of the portal things began going downhill. Tax specialists resorted to Twitter to raise the flag against hitches tagging Finance Minister. This has forced the minister to ask the co-founder and Chairman of Infosys, Nandan Nilekani to tackle users’ apprehensions. Though the company has said that it is working swiftly on this project with more than 750 people, even after approximately 90 days many glitches are still present, and the new portal has become a running comedy. The government has summoned the entity and ordered its team to resolve the problems by September 15, 2021.
Similarly, the company’s work on MCA 21 (Ministry of Corporate Affairs) and the GSTN (Ministry of Finance) projects gave similar type of headache to many professionals and businessmen.
‘All is not well’ with the I-T portal: Numerous glitches cropped up immediately after the launch of the portal. Failure to create a One Time Password or Pin for authenticating Aadhar, hitches relating to password creation, inability to integrate historical data for previous returns are prominent among them. Some of the additional serious problems are mistakes in the calculation of interest, wrong catching of details from Form 16, failure to add particulars for tax exemption for trusts, failure to accept the tax return even days after submission, failure of the e-verification system, inability to capture the details from Form 26AS and consumption of a lot of time in uploading the return.
Furthermore, the portal was not fully functional and complete at the time of introduction. Several features were absent in the portal, and it was half-baked. There are manifold levels in the portal that should work in a cohesive manner for smooth transactions on the site. This has not occurred in the new tax portal. The government also failed to outline the scope precisely and introduced the portal in a hurry. This means that the gateway was far from ready before the introduction, and it was launched hastily.
Another common problem faced by the tax consultants is the poor performance of the e-proceedings utility. This is taxing for the taxpayers who must file responses to questions raised by the Income Tax department. They are also not able to upload any documents within a specified period. Also, due to the non-accessibility of online service for filing of Form 15CA or Form 15CB people making foreign remittances were not able to file the prescribed forms. This has created a major commercial impact.
The processing pace of the new portal also remains relatively time-consuming than the previous version despite some developments from the time when the portal was launched. In addition, ITR forms for companies, partnership firms, and Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) are still not available for filing. Due to numerous functional glitches, the user interface of the new portal is very difficult to use as it follows a step-by-step tactic. In the earlier portal, it was easy to fill in particulars on several tabs of the return form and populate them progressively till the time of filing. However, now, to fill up the particulars you may have immediate access to them till all the fields in an earlier step are filled.
As a final point, the compliance portals like I-T portal should be free from regular technical glitches. The government should not levy the interest for those taxpayers, who have already paid their total tax liability if they file their tax return within the prolonged-time limit. The government should act fast and fix the hitches creating chaos. Otherwise, it would be huge trouble for the government that asserts by upgraded technology and makes big statements of creating digital powers for ease of doing business and ease of living. The fact is that the tax portal glitch is a blunder by both the government and Infosys. Therefore, making Infosys the only villain in the story is prejudicial. Two weeks before, the RSS-affiliated Panchjanya blamed Infosys for being anti-national. This is not a welcome trend. However, if Infosys fails to fix the problems of the portal on time, it may adversely influence the government’s revenue collection when it is experiencing sombre funds crisis.
(The writer is a financial and tax specialist, author and public speaker based in Goa. He can be reached at panditgoa@gmail.com)
