FinMin expects to resolve issues with new I-T portal by first week of Aug

The Union Finance Ministry is expecting that the various tech issues and glitches associated with the new Income-Tax (I-T) portal will be fixed soon. IT ministry expects the website to start functioning normally by August first week.

"Infosys and Finance Ministry are taking a daily update on improvements," sources told CNBC-TV18.

The new income tax e-filing portal had gone live on June 7, 2021. However, since its launch, numerous glitches in the functionality of the platform have been detected. Due to these glitches, users have not been able to use key utilities offered by the portal such as e-proceedings and digital signature certificates.

Infosys is the vendor that had developed the portal for the government which had sanctioned Rs 4,241 crore for this project. Infosys was offered the contract to develop the I-T portal in 2019. The IT giant was charged with coming up with a new I-T filling portal that would reduce the processing time for I-T returns from 63 days down to just one day.

Infosys has stated that it is working to fix the issues taxpayers are facing. The firm has explained that several issues with the portal have been fixed and that over 10 lakh income tax returns have been filed so far on the platform.

Infosys has been receiving flak from the taxpayers over the glitches plaguing the new I-T portal. Last month, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had met with Infosys' top executives to address the issue. She has told the IT firm to improve its services and redress grievances on priority as issues with the portal were impacting taxpayers adversely.

During her Bengaluru visit three weeks ago, Sitharaman had conveyed that Infosys was still working to resolve the issues and that some have been fixed but a few still remain unresolved.  

Earlier, during the company's Q1 earnings conference, Infosys COO Pravin Rao had stated that the Income Tax portal is the "top priority" for the IT firm.

Also Read: 40,000 ITRs being filed daily on the new portal, says CBDT as it fixes glitches

Also Read: Income tax portal functioning 'single largest priority': Infosys