The income tax department has granted relaxation in electronic filing of forms 15CA & 15CB in view of difficulties reported by taxpayers in filing of forms online on the new e-filing portal http://incometax.gov.in.

Taxpayers can now file Form 15 CA and Form 15 CB manually till June 30, the Ministry of Finance said. The decision was taken in view of rampant glitches on the new income tax filing online portal.

“As per the Income-tax Act, 1961, there is a requirement to furnish Form 15CA/15CB electronically. Presently, taxpayers upload the Form 15CA, along with the Chartered Accountant Certificate in Form 15CB, wherever applicable, on the e-filing portal, before submitting the copy to the authorized dealer for any foreign remittance,” the ministry said on Monday.

“In view of the difficulties reported by taxpayers in electronic filing of Income Tax Forms 15CA/15CB on the portal, www.incometax.gov.in, it has been decided that taxpayers can submit the aforesaid Forms in manual format to the authorised dealers till June 30, 2021. Authorised dealers are advised to accept such Forms till June 30th, 2021 for the purpose of foreign remittances,” the Finance Ministry further added.

A facility will be provided on the new e-filing portal to upload these forms at a later date in order to generate the Document Identification Number.

Any payment made by a resident Indian to a non-resident has to be declared in Form 15CA, wherein the resident states that tax on such a transaction has been deducted.

Form 15 CB is a certificate issued by a chartered accountant establishing that the provisions of the Double Taxation Avoidance Agreement (DTAA) and the Income-tax Act have been followed in tax deductions regarding the foreign remittances declared in Form 15 CA.

The new income-tax website launched on June 7, which promised to be a gamechanger, continues to be plagued by glitches, The Times of India reported. The taxpayers and tax professionals have said that they are unable to log in, or in cases where they are able to log in, they are unable to carry out transactions.

Abhishek Soni, Co-founder, and CEO, Tax2win.in, said: “Since the day of launch, there has been a lot of glitches being faced by the users on the new Income Tax Website. We have observed that the Income Tax Return filing of individuals has started. However, the website is working very slow, also, most of the time the filed tax return isn’t visible anywhere after filing the same on the website. Many users are still unable to login to the website and there have been frequent page loading issues as well.”