Glitches in the new income tax portal and the role of Infosys | Explained

The Ministry of Finance has summoned Infosys MD and CEO Salil Parekh to explain to Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman why the glitches in the new Income Tax e-filing portal have not been resolved yet. Parekh has been asked to appear on Monday, August 23. 

“Ministry of Finance has summoned Salil Parekh, MD & CEO @Infosys on 23/08/2021 to explain to hon’ble FM as to why even after 2.5 months since the launch of new e-filing portal, glitches in the portal have not been resolved. In fact, since 21/08/2021 the portal itself is not available,” the Income Tax department said in a tweet on Sunday.

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What are the glitches and why is Infosys involved?

In 2019, Infosys was awarded the contract to develop a next-generation income tax filing system, the aim of which was to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds.

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However, as soon as the portal was launched on June 7, people complained about the problems accessing, saying they were facing glitches. A lot of these complaints were made in Sitharaman’s Twitter timeline. 

Taxpayers complained that the portal had issues during the login and the past filings were not visible.

“The much-awaited e-filing portal 2.0 was launched last night at 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,” Sitharaman tweeted, acknowledging the problems. 

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“The new e-filing portal will ease the filing process and enhance end user experience. @nsitharaman ji, we have observed some technical issues on day one, and are working to resolve them. @Infosys regrets these initial glitches and expects the system to stabilise during the week,” co-founder of Infosys Nandan Nilekani tweeted. 

The portal (http://www.incometax.gov.in):

As per the income tax department, the new portal had to be a ‘new taxpayer-friendly portal’. The department had said that along with quick refunds, the portal will also offer all interactions and uploads or pending actions to be displayed on a single dashboard. It had to be equipped with free-of-cost ITR preparation software.