The Income Tax Department said that the performance of the new portal has largely stagnated.
The Income Tax Department on Thursday said over two crore Income Tax Returns (ITRs) have been filed so far for the financial year 2020-21 and the performance of the new IT portal has “stabilised to a great extent”.
Asking taxpayers to file their ITRs for the financial year 2020-21 (April 2020-March 2021) at the earliest, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said that all ITRs have been made available for e-filing.
“More than two crore ITRs have been filed on the portal for the Assessment Year (AY) 2021-22, of which ITRs 1 and 4 constitute 86%. It is encouraging to note that over 1.70 crore returns have been e-verified. Out of which 1.49 crore are through Aadhaar based OTP,” the CBDT said in a statement.
The process of e-verification through Aadhaar OTP and other methods is crucial for the department to initiate the process of ITR and issue of refund, if any.
Out of the verified ITRs 1 and 4, more than 1.06 crore ITRs have been processed and more than 36.22 lakh refunds have been issued for the assessment year 2021-22. Processing of ITR 2 and 3 will be started soon.
The new portal was launched on June 7 and initially, taxpayers reported glitches and difficulties in the functioning of the portal.
“Several technical issues have been resolved and the performance of the portal has stabilized to a great extent,” the CBDT said. More than 13.44 crore unique taxpayers have logged in till October 13 and around 54.70 lakh taxpayers have availed the benefit of ‘Forgot Password’. Facility to retrieve their passwords.
“E-Proceedings and faceless proceedings have been enabled with functionalities including video conferencing for evaluation and seeking adjournment or appointment and filing by authorized representatives.
It said, “Taxpayers have been able to see over 12.20 lakh notices issued by the department under faceless assessment/appeal/penalty proceedings, on which more than 6.24 lakh responses have been registered.”
Digital Signature Certificate (DSC) registration of non-residents has been enabled and a total of 4.87 lakh DSCs have been registered.
Till October 13, over 15.72 lakh statutory forms have been submitted including 9.08 lakh TDS statements, 1.29 lakh Form 10A for registration of trusts/institutions and 22,075 Vivad se Vishwas forms.
Over 1.83 lakh 15CA and 37,870 15CB forms related to foreign remittances have been filed and more than 21.40 lakh e-PANs have been allotted free of cost online. Legal heir functionality has been enabled for registration and compliance.
“The Income Tax Department strongly urges all taxpayers to view their Form 26AS through e-filing portal to verify the accuracy of TDS and tax payment and to avail pre-filing of ITR.
“All taxpayers who have not yet filed their Income Tax Return for AY 2021-22 are requested to file their return at the earliest,” the CBDT said.
The government has twice extended the due date for filing Income Tax Return (ITR) for the financial year 2020-21. For individual taxpayer, the last date is December 31.
The new e-filing portal www.incometax.gov.in, launched on June 7, started from the day it was launched with taxpayers and professionals reporting discrepancies and difficulties in its functioning. Infosys was awarded the contract to develop the portal in 2019.
The Union finance ministry on August 23 had “called” Infosys CEO Salil Parekh to explain why the portal developed by the software major continues to have problems.
Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in a meeting with Mr Parekh, expressed “deep disappointment” over the ongoing glitches over two months after the portal was launched and gave him time till September 15 to resolve all issues.
Mr Parekh had said on Wednesday that the portal was seeing “steady progress” and the concerns of taxpayers were “progressively addressed”.
However, he did not specify when the technical glitches would be completely resolved and all functions on the portal would be available to tax filers.
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