A month after its launch and two weeks after the finance minister reviewed its functioning, technical glitches continue to mar the functioning of the new income tax portal as certain key utilities like e-proceedings and digital signature certificate are not yet functional, say chartered accountants.
Also, some overseas firms have been facing problems in logging in to the portal, they said.
The much-touted new income tax portal ‘www.Incometax.Gov.In’ had a bumpy start from the day of its launch on June 7 as it continued to face tech glitches, which prompted Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to call a meeting on June 22 with officials of Infosys which has developed the new website.
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.
Even after two weeks of the meeting and over a month of the portal launch, users still continue to encounter multiple problems like unable to file I-T returns for past years, download intimation notice u/s 143(1) for AY 2019-20 and earlier years, and Form- 3 under ‘Vivad se Vishwas Scheme’ is not visible on the portal.
In response to queries on the glitches on I-T portal, Infosys said, “We’re in our silent period. Clarity on the income tax matter was provided at our recently concluded AGM”.
An email sent to the Finance Ministry for comments remained unanswered.
BDO India Partner (Tax & Regulatory Services) Amit Ganatra said after the meeting of the Finance Minister with the Infosys team on June 22, it appeared that all the pending issues would get resolved quickly. While there has been improvement in the functioning of thesite thereafter, it seems that the technology-related challenges still persist and it may take some more time to get the site up and running completely.
“The e-proceedings tab is not fully functional, online rectification option is not available, JSON utility for filing tax returns in ITR 5, 6 and 7 is still not available and unlike the earlier website there is no tab for the VsV scheme for providing comprehensive information and no update of the pending actions tab, these are some of the functionalities amongst others that remain to be addressed in the new tax portal,” Ganatra added.
Dhruva Advisors LLP Partner Sandeep Bhalla said Form 15CA/CB utility (relating to remittances) is still awaited. While physical filing of the same is permitted, it is a time-consuming process.
This is a time when companies declare and pay dividends and physically filing Form 15CA/ CB for remittance to each shareholder can be a task.
“Also, the DSC is now required to be registered on the personal e-filing account of the authorized signatory. In the case of foreign companies having non-resident authorized signatories not having a
PAN in India, it is unclear as to how this procedure will work. In fact, for such foreign companies, an error is being encountered even at the time of attempting to login onto the e-filing portal,” Bhalla added.
Industry chamber PHDCCI’s Direct Taxes Committee Chairman Mukul Bagla said the new income tax portal is expected to improve efficiency in tax return filing alongwith general tax administration.
However, since the portal has major glitches even till date, the income tax work of taxpayers and tax professionals is seriously hampered.