Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman today tagged IT giant Infosys and its co-founder and chairman, Nandan Nilekani, after receiving a large number of complaints from users on the new e-filing website of the Income Tax Department which was launched on Monday. She said she hoped Infosys and Mr Nilekani would not "let down our taxpayers in the quality of services being provided".
"The much awaited e-filing portal 2.0 was launched last night 20:45hrs.I see in my TL grievances and glitches. Hope @Infosys & @NandanNilekani will not let down our taxpayers in the quality of service being provided. Ease in compliance for the taxpayer should be our priority," Ms Sitharaman tweeted.
Mr Nilekani responded by saying they were working to fix the glitches.
Infosys was, in 2019, given 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.
Bengaluru-headquartered Infosys had also developed the government's GST Network (GSTN) portal, used for GST payment and return filing. The software major had faced flak for criticism in 2017 over glitches on the website.
The new URL of the tax filing website, https://www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/home, replaced the long-existing http://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in, and it went live at 8:45 pm, Ms Sitharaman and the tax department said in tweets.
The platform, which received intense traffic since its launch, threw up technical difficulties for users. While some users complained on social media that certain features were taking longer than usual to load in the new portal, others praised the new facilities.
The new portal is integrated with immediate processing of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) to issue quick refunds to taxpayers, and all interactions and uploads or pending actions will be displayed on a single dashboard for follow-up action by the taxpayer, the Central Board of Direct Taxes had said about the latest website.
Taxpayers will be able to proactively update their profile to provide certain details of their income, including salary, house property and business/profession, which will be used in pre-filling their ITR in the new web portal.
Detailed enablement of pre-filling with salary income, interest, dividend and capital gains will be available after TDS (tax deducted at source) and SFT (statement of financial transaction) statements are uploaded (due date June 30, 2021), it added.
The CBDT, which frames policies for the tax department, said that features like the online tax payment system and a mobile app will be activated only on June 18.
(With inputs from PTI)
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