Finance Minister asks Infosys to fix issues with new income tax e-filing portal on priority

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman met with Infosys representatives to review technical issues that plague the new income tax e-filing portal.  The new income tax portal e-filing portal had gone live on June 7, 2021. However, since its launch, numerous glitches in the functionality of the app have been detected. Infosys is the vendor that had developed the portal for the government.

In the meeting, Sitharaman expressed concern for the various problems being faced by the stakeholders in the new e-filing portal that was expected to provide a seamless experience to the Indian taxpayers. The Finance Minister has asked Infosys to address all issues without further loss of time. She has told the IT firm to improve its services and redress grievances on priority as issues with the portal are impacting taxpayers adversely. The Finance Minister exhorted Infosys to make the portal more humane and user-friendly.

Apart from the Finance Minister, MoS for Finance Anurag Thakur, Revenue secretary Tarun Bajaj, CBDT chairman Jagannath Mohapatra and other senior ministry officials were also present for the meeting. Infosys was represented by its MD and CEO, Salil Parekh and COO, Shri Praveen Rao among other members of their team.

During the meeting, the Finance Minister emphasised that enhancing services for taxpayers is an important priority for the present government and every effort should be made to achieve this.

Before the meeting, the Finance Ministry had invited suggestions regarding the glitches on the e-filing portal from the general public. "More than 700 emails detailing over 2000 issues including 90 unique issues/problems in the portal were received in response to the same," noted a government press release.

Sitharaman expressed her gratitude to the people who sent inputs and assured them that their suggestions would be taken up and addressed on priority. She appreciated the taxpayers who have kept up with the timelines of compliance despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

Infosys has taken note of the issues highlighted by the stakeholders. "They informed that Infosys has been working to fix the technical issues noticed in the functioning of the portal and that they have augmented the resources for execution of the project on the hardware as well as the application side and that some of the issues have already been identified and fixed," noted the release.

Infosys has assured that for the remaining issues, their teams are at work fixing them. Infosys gave the expected timelines within which the issues such as e-proceedings, Form 15CA/15CB, TDS statements, DSC, viewing of past ITRs etc. are expected to be resolved.

(Edited by Mohammad Haaris Beg)

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