Income tax portal: Finance ministry officials hold review meeting with Infosys chief

Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj along with senior finance ministry officials on Thursday held a meeting with Infosys Managing Director Salil Parekh to review the performance of the new income tax portal.

More than 3.5 crore Income Tax Returns (ITR) have been filed so far for the financial year 2020-21 through the portal, which had faced glitches following which the ministry had directed Infosys to urgently address the issues.

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Infosys has developed the new income tax e-filing portal 'www.incometax.gov.in'.

In a statement on Thursday, the ministry said that Bajaj along with other senior ministry officials held a review meeting regarding the portal with Parekh.

As briefed by Infosys, various steps have been taken, including augmentation of the technical infrastructure and setting up of a dedicated war room to monitor the performance of the portal, it said.

According to the statement, Infosys has assured the ministry about its preparedness to ensure a smooth filing season to instill confidence among the taxpayers.

"As on December 15, 3.59 crore Income Tax Returns (ITRs) have been filed on the new e-filing portal of the (Income Tax) Department. The number of ITRs filed per day has crossed 6 lakh and increasing everyday as the extended due date of December 31, 2021 is approaching," the statement said.

Out of the total ITRs filed for AY 2021-22, 57.6 per cent is ITR1 (2.07 crore), 8.3 per cent is ITR2 (29.70 lakh), 9.4 per cent is ITR3 (33.61 lakh), 23.4 per cent are ITR4 (84.05 lakh), ITR5 (3.12 lakh), ITR6 (1.33 lakh) and ITR7 (0.24 lakh), it added.

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Nearly 52 per cent of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the balance have been uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities, the statement said.

The ministry also said that it was encouraging to note that 3.11 crore returns have been e-verified and out of them, more than 2.69 crore were through Aadhaar-based OTP.

The process of e-verification through Aadhaar-based OTP and other methods is important for the department to commence processing of the ITR and to issue refunds, if any.

The department has been issuing reminders to taxpayers through e-mails, SMS and media campaigns encouraging taxpayers to file their income tax returns without further delay.

"All taxpayers who are yet to file their Income Tax returns for AY 2021-22 are requested to file their returns at the earliest," it said.

Following glitches in the portal, the Income Tax Department had to allow manual filing of remittance forms and extended the due dates for electronic filing of forms related to intimation by pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.

The last date for filing ITR for 2020-21 fiscal is December 31, 2021.

In 2019, Infosys was awarded the Rs 4,242 crore-contract to develop the portal. The project was aimed at developing the next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to 1 day and to expedite refunds.

Between January 2019 to June 2021, the government paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys for developing the portal.

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