Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman has directed the Infosys team to address “on priority” problems faced by taxpayers on the e-filing portal in order to improve services and make it more user-friendly.
At a meeting held on Tuesday, she expressed deep concern on various problems being faced in the new portal which was expected to provide a seamless experience to taxpayers.
Infosys team led by MD & CEO Salil Parekh and COO Praveen Rao gave the assurance that their teams were working on these issues and 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 in about a week. It was decided that the timelines mentioned by Infosys to redress the issues would also be placed in public domain in due course.
Also read: Income Tax Dept. launches new e-filing portal
The meeting with the finance minister was followed by another detailed meeting between senior officers of the Department of Revenue and the Infosys team, covering technical issues in the new portal. The government also consulted chartered accountants body ICAI getting specific inputs lying between the intersection of technology and taxation.
Suggestions in respect of the glitches on the portal were invited online by June 18. More than 700 emails detailing over 2,000 issues including 90 unique problems in the portal were received in response to the same.
During the meeting, the finance minister emphasised that enhanced taxpayer service is an important priority for the present Government and every effort should be made to meet this goal.
The Infosys team also said 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.
The new e-filing portal 2.0 of Income Tax Department (incometax.gov.in) went live on June 7. Since its launch, there were numerous glitches in the functioning of the new portal. Taking note of the grievances voiced on social media by taxpayers, tax professionals and other stakeholders, the Finance Minister had also flagged the issues to Infosys, calling upon them to address these concerns.
However, since the portal continued to be plagued by technical glitches causing inconvenience to taxpayers, it was decided to hold a meeting between Finance Ministry and Infosys as also other stakeholders on Tuesday.
The Finance Minister assured them that the Government is responsive to their problems and is proactively committed to enhance taxpayer service and experience.
The team from Infosys, which was led by the CEO and COO of Infosys, took note of the issues highlighted by the stakeholders. They also noted the observations and suggestions received from various users and stakeholders through email. The Infosys team acknowledged the technical issues in the functioning of the portal and shared the status of the resolution w.r.t the issues highlighted by the stakeholders.
