With new IT portal ‘Stabilization’, taxpayers urged to file ITR at the earliest

Yesterday, the Infosys CEO echoed the same sentiment, saying that the portal is seeing “steady progress” and taxpayers’ concerns are “progressively addressed”.

However, he did not mention when the technical glitches would be completely resolved and all functions on the portal would be available to tax filers.

The IT department said that more than 2 crore ITRs have been filed so far for the financial year 2020-21. To further ease the process, all ITRs have been made available for e-filing.

The new portal was launched on June 7 and initially, taxpayers reported glitches and difficulties in the functioning of the portal.

“More than two crore ITRs have been filed on the portal for the election year 2021-22, of which ITRs 1 and 4 are 86 per cent. It is encouraging to note that more than 1.70 crore returns have been e-verified, of which 1.49 crore are through Aadhaar based OTP,” the CBDT said in a statement.

The tax department has said that since then several technical issues have been resolved and the performance of the portal has stabilized to a great extent.

It said, “As on October 13, 2021, more than 13.44 crore unique taxpayers have logged in. About 54.70 lakh taxpayers have availed the ‘Forgot Password’ facility to retrieve their passwords.”

CBDT has issued refund of excess ₹84,781 crore to over 59.51 lakh taxpayers from April 1 to October 11. Income tax refund out of total refund ₹22,214 crore has been released and corporate tax refund ₹62,567 crores have been released.

Filing ITR early brings many benefits to the taxpayers. Even though the government has given relief in the time limit, there is no escape from the penalty for late filing of returns. Many taxpayers eventually pay interest for delayed filing of returns and payment of tax.

Apart from interest on tax due, late fee is also levied for missing due date.