Sitharaman urges Infosys to fix tech glitches of tax e-filing portal

Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman on Tuesday asked Infosys and its chairman Nandan Nilekani to fix technical glitches being encountered on the income tax department's new e-filing website, after users flooded her Twitter timeline with complaints.

Infosys was in 2019 awarded a contract to develop the next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to one day and expedite refunds.

The portal went live Monday evening.

Early on Tuesday morning, Sitharaman took to Twitter to announce the launch of the new portal, www.incometax.gov.in, saying that the "important milestone to make the compliance experience more taxpayer-friendly" went live at 2045 hrs on Monday.

But, soon, her timeline was flooded with user complaints.

"I see in my TL grievances and glitches.

"Hope @Infosys & @NandanNilekani will not let down our taxpayers in the quality of service being provided," she tweeted later.

TL here stands for timeline.

"Ease in compliance for the taxpayer should be our priority," she said while quoting a tweet from a user who was unable to log in to the new e-filing portal.

Infosys had also developed the GST Network (GSTN) portal, used for GST payment and return filing.

The software major had faced flak for slow functioning of the GSTN portal.

Photograph: ANI