ITR filing: 9 issues taxpayers are facing

The new income tax portal was expected to help taxpayers file ITR in a simple manner. It was believed to be promoting DIY tax filing. However, the experience so far even for tax consultants and chartered accountants has remain far from satisfactory. The social media accounts and discussions on personal finance forums are rife with taxpayers sharing their ITR filing plight.

Following are nine common problems that a lot of them are facing:

1) New registrations

First-time taxpayers who are supposed to sign up with the Income Tax Department are unable to do so. Registering PAN number is becoming a hassle. The page turns unresponsive.

2) OTP not received

If you have forgotten your password, you are in for a big trouble as the ‘forget password’ feature is not working. If you request for password change through OTP on your registered mobile number and mail ID, the OTP doesn’t come. On entering wrong password thrice, your account will get blocked.

3) Data not pre-filled in ITR forms

The interest income, capital gains and dividend income data is supposed to get pre-filled in ITR forms. However, the information is not getting pre-filled. In some cases the information mentioned in the Form 26-AS is not matching with what is mentioned in ITR forms.

4) Issues in remittances

If a client has to make some foreign remittances, his or her CA has to submit Form 15CB to the bank. However, it is not yet available on the new portal. “Utility of online filing of Form 15CA/ 15CB (relating to remittances) is still awaited. Although the physical filing of said forms has been permitted by the tax department. However, it is a time-consuming process,” says Anurag Jain, Partner, ByTheBook Consulting LLP.

5) Unanswered complaints

The finance ministry, at the time of the launch, had promised a call center for taxpayer assistance for prompt response to taxpayer queries. The website was supposed to have detailed FAQs, user manuals and videos. Chatbot/live agent were also to be provided. However, grievances filed by assessee through the new website have remained unanswered. Even CAs are unable to reach out to tax officials.

6) Updating profiles

Mohnish Wadhwa, Partner, Wadhwa & Shah, says taxpayers are facing problems in updating their profiles to 100% level due to which they are unable to access some of the features of the website.

7) No tax refunds

Income tax returns filed for FY20 are not yet processed. “Taxpayers are supposed to file rectification if tax refunds have not happened, but rectification option is disabled. In these cases, users are helpless. What we are doing is we are raising tickets with the I-T department. A rectification raised in January has just been processed for us. I hope the returns will start getting cleared in a couple of weeks,” says Sujit Bangar, founder, taxbuddy.com.

8) Re-registration of digital signature

Existing taxpayers had their digital signatures registered with the old website. “They are facing problem in re-registering the digital signature on the new income tax portal which is causing delays and pile-up of ITR filings,” says Wadhwa.

9) Not all ITR forms available

Another major challenge is Only ITR -1, 2 and 4 are available on the new portal. ITR – 3, 5, 6 and 7 are still awaited. “ITR-1 and ITR-4 filings are going smooth now, but ITR-2 is taking a lot of time. Other forms should be available soon even though there is no indication from the CBDT as yet,” says Bangar.