The Central Board of Direct Taxes on Thursday extended the deadline to file Income Tax returns from 30 September to 31 December.
This comes merely a day after the income tax department said a number of technical issues on the new ITR portal are being progressively addressed and 1.19 crore ITRs for 2020-21 fiscal year have been filed so far.
Giving updates of activities carried out by taxpayers on the portal, the I-T department said over 8.83 crore unique taxpayers have logged into the portal till 7 September, 2021 with a daily average of over 15.55 lakh in September. The Income Tax Return (ITR) filing has increased to 3.2 lakh daily in September 2021.
“A number of technical issues are being progressively addressed and there has been a positive trend reflected in the statistics of the various filings on the portal…. 1.19 crore ITRs for AY 2021-22 have been filed. “Of these, over 76.2 lakh taxpayers have used the online utility of the portal to file the returns,” the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) said in a statement. The new e-filing portal, www.incometax.gov.in, was launched on 7 June. It had a bumpy start since the day of its launch with taxpayers and professionals reporting glitches and difficulties.
“The Ministry of Finance has been regularly monitoring the resolution of issues with Infosys Ltd,” the statement added. Infosys was in 2019 given the contract to develop the portal. “It is encouraging to note that over 94.88 lakh ITRs have also been e-verified, which is necessary for processing by the Centralized Processing Center. Of this, 7.07 lakh ITRs have been processed,” it added. Taxpayers have been able to view over 8.74 lakh notices issued by the department under the faceless assessment / appeal/ penalty proceedings, to which over 2.61 lakh responses have been filed.
An average of 8,285 notices for e-proceedings are being issued and 5,889 responses are being filed in September 2021 on a daily basis. Over 10.60 lakh statutory forms have been submitted, including 7.86 lakh TDS statements, 1.03 lakh Form 10A for registration of trusts /institutions, 0.87 lakh Form 10E for arrears of salary and 0.10 lakh Form 35 for appeal.
Aadhaar- PAN linking has been done by 66.44 lakh taxpayers and over 14.59 lakh e-PANs have been allotted. These two facilities are being availed of by over 0.50 lakh taxpayers on a daily basis in September 2021. “It is reiterated that the Department is continuously engaged with Infosys to ensure a smooth filing experience to taxpayers,” the CBDT added. The finance ministry had on 23 August “summoned” Infosys CEO Salil Parekh to explain why issues continued to plague the portal developed by the software major.
Finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman, in the meeting with Parekh, expressed “deep disappointment” over glitches persisting for more than two months after launch and gave him time till 15 September to resolve all issues. Between January 2019 to June 2021, the government has paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys for developing the portal.
With inputs from PTI
