The New IT portal has been in the news constantly for a lot of reasons. The responsibility to build this portal was given to Infosys through an open tender published on Central Public Procurement.
The New IT Portal was launched on 7th June 2021 and the main promise of this portal was a better and smoother user experience. However, the road to achieving this aim had quite a lot of hiccups on its way
What were the hiccups?
Right from its launch, taxpayers were witnessing certain difficulties on the portal. While some said they were unable to log in, other faced difficulties while trying to update their personal details on the portal. Taxpayers took to social media platforms to express their grievances. This did not go unnoticed by The Finance Minister who time and again urged Infosys to work on the glitches to provide a smooth user experience to the taxpayers.
On 21st August 2021, the portal went under emergency maintenance and wasn’t accessible to taxpayers for two days. . The Finance Minister summoned Mr Salil Parekh, CEO of Infosys on 23rd August to discuss the glitches on the portal. Post the meeting, Infosys was given a deadline of 15th September to fix all the ongoing glitches.
Considering the fact that this would leave a relatively narrow window for taxpayers to file their ITR, the government has extended the ITR filing due dates. Take a look at the revised dates
Income Tax Filing due dates for FY 2020-21 (AY 2021-22)📅
— Quicko (@HowToQuicko) September 9, 2021
Putting a whole lot of speculation and doubts to rest, the @IncomeTaxIndia and @FinMinIndia just extended the due dates for Income Tax Return filing🕑 pic.twitter.com/7zS6uk6XHP
What’s the status now?
Infosys has been continually working to bring the New Portal up to pace and there has been a sustained improvement in the portal. Infosys said that over 3 crore users have successfully used the portal to carry out various transactions. Further, ITR filing has also picked up pace with the portal facilitating over 2.5 lakh returns daily.
Infosys has also stated that several important statutory forms like 15G, 15H, 10IE along with TDS returns are also being filed in large numbers. And as the portal’s capacity continues to increase, these numbers are expected to go up
Infosys has acknowledged that some taxpayers may continue to face glitches on the portal. However, they are actively working to make the portal fully functional for everyone.
With the new IT Portal, ITD has given enhanced capabilities to ERIs as well.
Where do ERIs come in?
ERIs are authorized intermediaries who are eligible to file income tax returns and perform other tax-related services on behalf of taxpayers.
What can ERIs do?
Create and manage your Income Tax Profile: You can create and manage your IT profile via ERIs like changing or updating your address, link documents, and so on.
Submit Statutory Forms: You can submit statutory forms like Form 10 IE & more via ERIs.
Manage Refund Bank accounts: You can add and select your bank accounts for receiving refunds through ERIs.
Track IT refund: ERIs make it simple for you to track your IT refund.
Submit refund reissue request: ERIs also helps you submit refund reissue request to the ITD.
E-file and E-verify: Most importantly, ERIs makes it super simple for you to file and verify your ITR.
We at Quicko are committed to making taxes simple for you. So, we are coming up with something exciting that will not only offer these services but much more. So stay tuned!