The government on Monday said certain key functionalities like user profile, ITR 1, 2 and 4 filing, e-proceedings, viewing of old ITRs, are available to the users on the new income tax portal.
The Income Tax Department had launched the new e-filing portal on June 7.
In a reply to a question on whether technical glitches continue to mar the functioning of the new IT portal, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said most of the issues reported by taxpayers pertain to non-availability or technical issues of certain functionalities or forms.
“Certain key functionalities like user profile, dashboard, filing of ITR 1, 2 & 4, e-proceedings, including Video conferencing requests, Digital Signing Certificate, viewing of old Income Tax returns, e-verification, e-PAN service, Aadhaar-PAN Linking, Adding Authorised Representative, etc. are available to the users,” he said in the Lok Sabha.
The tax department has taken corrective measures through Infosys based on feedback from taxpayers, tax professionals and representatives of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), he added.
Meanwhile, taxpayers continue to face problems at a time when tax filing is at its peak.
Practitioners claim the portal has not been working properly since its launch in June. A Mumbai-based tax consultant, said “We are seeing issues like difficulty in filing ITR for FY 2020-21, with the portal showing errors for the bank account and requiring a late fee and treating returns are delayed even though the due date has been extended. There are difficulties in registering the DSC. There are difficulties in downloading forms from past years. The e-proceedings tab is not fully operational, while the tab for the ongoing Vivaad-se-Vishwas scheme is missing. The facility to file Form 15CA and 15CB for foreign remittances is not functional leading to the need for physical filing of these forms with the banks, leading to significant delays in payment processing. Responding to notices is difficult as the utilities for past years don’t work consistently and DSC validation is glitching or OTPs are not reaching for e-verification. It is also almost impossible to update the profile to 100%, with no way to see what is missing or pending in some cases.”
Income Tax practitioners hope that the major issues can be sorted before we hit the peak tax filing season and the system is able to handle huge user load without crashing.
