Over three crore taxpayers have successfully completed transactions and close to 1.5 crore Income Tax Returns filed in the new I-T portal, Infosys said in a statement today.
"Over the last few weeks, the portal has seen steady increase in usage with taxpayers’ concerns being progressively addressed. So far over 3 crore taxpayers have logged into the portal and have successfully completed various transactions. Even as the portal makes sustained progress with crores of taxpayers successfully performing transactions, the Company acknowledges the difficulties some users continue to experience and is working expeditiously, in collaboration with the Income Tax Department, to further streamline end-user experience," the company said in a BSE filing on September 23.
This comes after the persistent glitches the Infosys’ new e-filing portal faced since the launch on June 7. Persistent glitches forced Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman to call Infosys’ executives for meeting twice, in June and on August 23. Sitharaman gave the IT major time till September 15 to get the portal in order.
However, even after the government’s September 15 deadline for the Bengaluru-based IT major Infosys to fix the income-tax (I-T) portal, glitches were far from resolved, tax professionals and users have earlier told Moneycontrol. According to them, while some features have improved, there is still a long way to go. The government’s decision to extend the deadline for filing income-tax returns (ITRs) to December 31, 2021 had alleviated immediate concerns, they said.
New I-T portal updates
The company said that during September, on average, more than 15 lakh unique taxpayers have logged into the portal daily, and over 1.5 crore returns have been filed till date. It further added that over 85 percent of taxpayers who have filed their returns have also completed their e-verification, largely through Aadhaar-OTP authentication.
The portal is currently facilitating over 2.5 lakh returns filing on a daily basis and the ITR is available for all, including small and large businesses. Earlier the form was not available for large businesses for filing ITR. In addition, issues with certain forms have been resolved as well. This includes 15G, 15H, EQ1, 10A, 10E, 10IE, DTVSV, 15CA, 15CB, 35 as well as TDS Returns, which were being filed in large numbers.
“More than 11.5 lakh statutory forms and over 8 lakh TDS returns have already been filed. Taxpayer services such as e-proceedings, response to notices and demands, e-PAN services, DSC registrations, and functionality for legal heir, have also been enabled. Over 16.6 lakh e-PANs have been allocated. 4.3 lakh DSC registrations and over 3.44 lakh e-proceeding responses to notices have also been completed,” the statement added.
Working closely with tax professionals However, the company acknowledges the challenges the users faced and continue to face when using the portal. “Even as it makes steady progress, Infosys recognizes the ongoing challenges faced by some users and has engaged with more than 1200 taxpayers directly to better understand their concerns,” the company said.
Infosys said that the firm is focused on the challenges while working closely with the Chartered Accountant community to ensure that a comprehensive set of user scenarios are supported and thoroughly tested before deployment.
With over 750 resources dedicated to the project, the company said that it is making rapid progress to complete significant portions of work, in collaboration with officials from the Income Tax Department. “Infosys takes pride in partnering with the Government of India and continues to work closely with various departments to accelerate the digital evolution of the country’s technology capabilities,” the statement said.
IT portal glitches
Infosys was in 2019 awarded a Rs 4,200-crore contract to develop the new e-filing portal to replace the old one to reduce the processing time from 63 days to one.
The idea was to have a taxpayer-friendly portal that was simple to use and expedited refunds but the portal has been more in news for being inaccessible than making the process smooth. The portal was launched on June 7, 2021 amid peak tax season and things started going downhill from the word go.
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