Nirmala Sitharaman asks Infosys to make Income Tax portal 'more humane, user-friendly'

New Delhi [India], June 22 (ANI): Union Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday flagged concerns in the new Income-Tax portal in a meeting with Infosys officials and urged them to address these issues.
As per a statement issued by the Commissioner of Income Tax, Surabhi Ahluwalia, the Finance Minister chaired today's meeting between senior officials of the Finance Ministry and Infosys to discuss glitches in the new Income Tax Portal.
Sitharaman exhorted Infosys(service provider) to work on the tax portal to make it "more humane and user-friendly," the statement said.
"The Union Finance Minister expressed her deep concern on the various problems being faced by the stakeholders in the new portal which was expected to provide a seamless experience to taxpayers. The Union Finance Minister asked Infosys to address all issues without further loss of time, improve their services, redress grievances on priority as it was impacting taxpayers adversely." the statement said.
"MoS (Finance) Anurag Singh Thakur also participated in the meeting. The interaction was attended by Tarun Bajaj, Secretary Revenue, JB Mohapatra, Chairman, CBDT, Anu J Singh, Member (L and Systems), CBDT and other senior officers of CBDT. Infosys was represented by its MD and CEO, Salil Parekh and COO, Praveen Rao and other members of their team. The meeting was also attended by 10 tax professionals from across the country, including representatives of ICAI and the All India Federation of Tax Practitioners (AIFTP)," the Income Tax department said in the statement.
The new e-filing portal 2.0 of the Income Tax Department (incometax.gov.in) went live on July 7. Since its launch, there were numerous glitches in the functioning of the new portal.
"Taking note of the grievances voiced on social media by taxpayers, tax professionals and other stakeholders, the Union Finance Minister had also flagged the issues to the vendor Infosys, calling upon them to address these concerns," the statement said.
Notably, suggestions in respect of the glitches on the portal were invited online by June 18. As per the IT department, more than 700 emails detailing over 2000 issues including 90 unique issues/problems in the portal were received in response to the same.
"During the meeting, the Union Finance Minister emphasized that enhanced taxpayer service is an important priority for the present Government and every effort should be made to amplify the same. While appreciating the role of ICAI and its President, Jambusaria and the ICAI's positive contribution in giving shape to today's meeting, she complimented them for providing specific nuanced inputs lying between the intersection of technology and taxation. Union Finance Minister also expressed her gratitude to the people who sent inputs through email and assured them that their suggestions would be taken up in all earnestness and would be addressed on priority," the IT department said.
"The Union Finance Minister concluded her remarks by appreciating the taxpayers who have kept up with the timelines of compliances despite the Covid-19 pandemic. The Union Finance Minister also hoped that the positive engagement between taxpayers, tax professionals and the Government would continue in future. She assured them that the Government is responsive to their problems and is proactively committed to enhance taxpayer service and experience," it added.
IT department further said that the team from Infosys, which was led by the CEO and COO of Infosys, took note of the issues highlighted by the stakeholders.
"They also noted the observations and suggestions received from various users and stakeholders through email. The Infosys team acknowledged the technical issues in the functioning of the portal and shared the status of the resolution with respect to the issues highlighted by the stakeholders. They informed that Infosys has been working to fix the technical issues noticed in the functioning of the portal and that they have augmented the resources for execution of the project on the hardware as well as the application side and that some of the issues have already been identified and fixe," the statement said.
"For the other remaining technical issues, they assured that their teams were working on these issues and gave the expected timelines within which the issues such as e-proceedings, Form 15CA/15CB, TDS statements, DSC, viewing of past ITRs etc. are expected to be resolved in about a week. It was also decided that the timelines mentioned by Infosys to redress the issues would also be placed in public domain in due course," it added further. (ANI)