Major Issues on the New e-Filing Portal, Glitches To Be Fixed by 15th September

More than two months have passed. Still, the glitches persist on the new portal. The taxpayers have been facing continuing issues since the launch of the new income tax portal. With the return filing date approaching soon, the government must fix these issues on a priority basis. The Finance Ministry officials have held two meetings in the previous two months with the vendor, Infosys. Nirmala Sitharaman met the CEO of Infosys to address and cite the reasons for the continuing difficulties. She has given a deadline till 15th September to the IT giant to fix the issues. 

There are pertinent issues relating to the following:

• Issues related to logging in: The site runs slow at times, making it difficult to file returns/other forms. Presently, all the compliance forms are also not available on the new portal; however, once they become available, the users might face issues while filing them near the due dates with this slow speed.
• Data related to the past years is unavailable, which seems to be due to incomplete migration from the old portal to the new portal.
• In the case of non-residents, the one-time password (OTP) is not being received on the international number.
• While e-verifying, OTP is not received on time. At times the OTP received is not even being accepted. The status of verification, if completed or not,  is also not known to the taxpayer.
• The data regarding the outstanding tax liability and ITR filing before FY 2013-14 is not yet available on the portal.
• A separate drop-down for claiming exemptions under Section 10 is not reflecting under the income from other sources.
• While uploading the offline utilities, even when the bank accounts are validated, the system throws an error as ‘Enter the bank account.’
• If the companies opt for the new tax regime under Section 115BAA, Minimum Alternative Tax (MAT) provisions do not apply. However, the new portal is showing errors by calculating the MAT irrespective of the new tax regime option selected.
• Taxpayers cannot download the intimations sent under Section 143(1) for any of the past years. Also, the assessment proceeding’s closure orders cannot be downloaded. The trail of replies given by the taxpayers in response to the past notice’s is also not available on the new portal.
• The taxpayers are not able to download the e-PAN after generation on the new portal.

Apart from these, there are other issues relating to the assessments, filing forms like Form 15CA/CB, JSON utility, etc. The Infosys team has been working to fix all the problems faced by the taxpayers. The government has given a timeline for fixing all the issues till 15th September. 

Chartered Accountants and the taxpayer have requested an extension for the due date of filing the return of income. However, the income tax department has not yet provided any intimation in this regard. 

For any clarifications/feedback on the topic, please contact the writer at jyoti.arora@cleartax.in