Income tax returns website fiasco: Fix glitches by Sep 15, Govt tells Infosys

The income tax returns website has been suffering glitches ever since it was launched recently. There was even a massive outage just a few days ago. In this situation, when a solution was taking too long to be rolled out, the Finance Ministry called Infosys CEO Salil Parekh to Delhi for a meeting on Monday. The contract for the new Income Tax returns website was given to Infosys. During this meeting, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman expressed “deep disappointment” over the glitches that continue to bedevil the income tax e-filing portal and ordered software provider Infosys to fix all problems being faced by taxpayers on the e-filing portal by September 15.

The FM conveyed her disappointment and concerns of the Government and the taxpaying citizens about the continuing glitches in the portal even after two and a half months since its launch, which itself was delayed. She has demanded an explanation for the same.

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FM urged Parekh to put more resources and efforts into the portal so that the ‘the much-delayed delivery of agreed services is ensured’

Parekh indicated that his team was doing everything to ensure the smooth functioning of the portal. He said, "Over 750 team members are working on this project and Pravin Rao, the COO of Infosys, is personally overseeing this project." He also assured that Infosys is working expeditiously to ensure a glitch-free experience for the taxpayers on the portal.

The fresh September 15 deadline may well indicate that taxpayers’ woes will last for almost another month.

Citing the difficulties reported by taxpayers in electronic filing of IT returns, the Finance Ministry had earlier allowed a few forms to be submitted manually instead of online.

Earlier on June 22, Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had flagged concerns in the new Income-Tax portal in a meeting with Infosys officials and urged them to address these issues.