The Union Ministry of Finance on Sunday summoned Infosys Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh on Monday to explain the reason for the continued glitches in the Income Tax department’s e-filing portal after over two months since its launch.
The tax portal, developed by Infosys, was launched on June 7 with a host of new features for taxpayers. The new website aims to reduce processing time for tax returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds.
The finance ministry said that the e-filing portal was completely unavailable since Saturday.
Meanwhile, Infosys informed users that the portal was under emergency maintenance. “We will post an update once the portal is available again for taxpayers,” the company tweeted. “We regret the inconvenience.”
However, soon after the launch in June, users have been complaining about difficulties in using the portal.
On June 8, Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman had alerted Infosys chairperson Nandan Nilekani on Twitter about the glitches on the portal.
In response to Sitharaman’s tweet, Nilekani had then said he expected the tax filing system to stabilise during the week.
As the glitches remained unresolved two weeks later, Sitharaman held a meeting with Infosys officials. She had, at the meeting, expressed deep concern about the problems faced by those trying to access the tax portal.
Parekh and Infosys’ Chief Operating Officer Pravin Rao admitted that there were technical difficulties on the website, and informed the government that they were trying to fix the problems.
Infosys had also developed the government’s Goods and Services Tax Network portal. In 2020, the government objected to the firm’s “tardy” progress in resolving glitches on that website too.
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