Income tax practitioners continue to complain of glitches on I-T website

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Last year, the dates for filing Income Tax return was extended till January due to the Covid-19 pandemic. This year, some tax professionals apprehend, the dates have to be extended thanks to the glitches of the new revamped IT portal that was launched with much fanfare on June 7.

“For this year it might be a good idea to revive the old system and let the people submit the returns. The vendor can use the time to fix the problems. Otherwise, we might get a few extensions like last year,” Tapas Chakraborty, partner, Dhar and Basu, a tax consultancy firm.

Chakraborty can hardly be accused of exaggeration. Seven weeks after the portal was unveiled, income tax practitioners still complain that a number of important features are just not accessible.

Only a bit

“The situation has improved only a bit from the complete paralysis we encountered for some days after the portal was inaugurated,” said chartered accountant Soumyadipta Das.

Among the functions that are still not to carry out he listed frequent inability to file return, inability to see past records and download them or to reply to notice. “It is also not possible to file appeal against orders,” added Das.

FinMin’s admission

As the portal continued to plague all professionals and income taxpayers around the country, Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman admitted last week: “I wish it hadn’t happened this way. But we are correcting the course soon the portal will be as is planned, easy to use.”

Communications sent to Nandan Nilekani, non-executive chairman of Infosys and its spokesperson on when the vendor hoped to fix all the glitches did not yield any response till the time of writing this article. Their response will be incorporated as and when their view is received.

ITR I, II, IV

Himadri Mukhopadhyay, former secretary, Income Tax Bar Association said hundreds of representations have been filed from associations of lawyers, chartered accountants and income tax professionals. “However, the improvement in the portal is tardy. After much wrangling for about two months, ITR forms I, II and IV can be filed but that too with much difficulty and a degree of luck,” said Mukhopadhyay.

ITR form 1 is used by resident Indians for income up to Rs 50 lakh a year.

ITR form 2 is applicable for individuals and Hindu Undivided Family with income other than income from profits and gains from business or profession. Those with income from salary/pension and income from house property need to use this form.

ITR form 3 is for taxpayers who file return under the presumptive income scheme in section 44AD of the Income Tax Act.

E verification

“E verification is a crucial part of the process. It is mostly done on the basis of Aadhaar and OTPs. But there is a persistent problem here too,” said Chakraborty.

Either the OTP is not arriving, or event if it is, the process is taking so much time that its validity is expiring. “About 90% of the taxpayers file returns through Aadhaar-OTP and not through digital signature,” said Chakraborty.

Downloading

The failure in downloading IT returns is a big source of trouble since it is frequently required in many transactions. It creates problems in an individual applying for simple things such as home loans where ITRs are usually sought by the lender.

Intimation

“The intimations of past years cannot be found. If one looks for it ‘page not found’ messages are greeting the user,” said Chakraborty. According to Chakraborty, about 40%-50% of the problems have been solved so far.