Income Tax

Technical Glitches Mar the New Income Tax Portal

Nearly 1.5 months after its launch, the new income tax portal has been marred by technical glitches. This has caused obstruction to users and also resulted in wastage of valuable time of the users who were looking forward to its launch. The new income tax portal was launched on 1^st June 2021. In this article, we shall discuss the key issues faced by the users while using the portal.

Major issues faced in the following areas of the New Income Tax Portal

• Logging into the account

Earlier, the income tax efiling website was a single login portal, but the new income tax portal takes two glimpses/screen to log in. The GSTN portal is also quite alike, which gives two glimpses on each click. Further, as far as the login time is concerned, it takes more time to log in to the portal account of the assessee.

• ITR Filing

There have been issues with respect to filing Income Tax Return. It should be sorted as soon as possible, considering the filing process is pivotal and essential to the taxpayers.

• DSC Registration

Digital Signature Certificate registration was one of the most talked-about area. The DSC alignment should have been planned more efficiently, which could have helped in saving a lot of time for the professionals as well as stakeholders. The IT department had asked taxpayers to re-register their DSCs once again on the new portal.

• E-verifying Income Tax Returns

The income tax returns are unable to get e-verified, and OTPs are not obtained on time and sometimes even not being received by the users. This has been another talk of the town for the users.

• Filing Income Tax Appeals

The form for appeal is unable to get uploaded due to no OTPs, and this has caused a lot of frustration among professionals and the petitioner assessee.

• Form 15CA/CB

The assessee must align the form to the respective CA from the tab My CA and must select form 15CB however, the option to choose Form 15CB is not enabled or is not displayed. Therefore the assessee is unable to allocate 15CB to their CA. As a consequence, the last date of filing Form 15CA/CB manually has been extended.

A CA is required to manually prepare the 15CB, and the assessee is required to manually prepare 15CA to give to Ads. When the process is aligned with the new portal, this exercise has to be repeated on the system, which causes waste of time. This issue has been massively reported by the users.

• Mismatch in PAN data

Once the account is logged in, the profile is displayed to be incomplete, and the maximum attainment level varies 70 to 80%, and in some cases, Mismatch in PAN is showed where there is no mismatch.

• Rectification of return

The option of rectification of return is not yet available. For the previous outstanding demands, the option of rectification of return is not available.

• Form for Equalization Levy

Form 1 is not enabled, and when we proceed further, the page of access denied pops up. Therefore the date of Form 1 has been extended to one month, thus causing wastage of time.

• TDS/TCS returns filing

At the time of filing the TDS/TCS returns Quarter 1, previous quarter 4 2020-21 acknowledgment number is entered on being asked. The problem here is that the new portal is not accepting the acknowledgement number of Q4 while filing Q1 returns.

• Acknowledgment of e-filed TDS returns

The TRACES portal is unable to pick up the acknowledgment of e-filed TDS returns and is not showed in the justification report generated from the TRACES portal^[1]. According to the TRACES portal, the data of the new Income Tax Portal is not getting migrated to the TRACES portal.

• Form 26AS not reflecting in the pre-filled ITR form

The Form 26AS should be reflected on % basis in all the pre-filled forms. 26 AS is reflected in the ITR form sometimes, and sometimes it is not shown. Form 26AS is a decent form to be relied upon and is an essential basis for big-ticket transactions. It is used as a tool for different Memorandum of Understandings between CBIC, MSME and CBDT.

• Date of Birth on the Income Tax site

The date of birth in profile information is correct and conforms to the PAN and Aadhaar. However, while e-filing, the pre-fetched personal data is showcasing incorrect date of birth which is also un-editable and forces not to proceed.

• Registering as Tax deductor and tax collector

The previously filed TDS return and TDS registration have to be done again. However, while registering the tax deductor and tax collector, it is not allowing to register.

• LTCG module, deductions under section 80TTB

The deduction tab is not able to pick the figures and also not calculating the correct amount of the taxable income. Schedule 112A doesn’t have any provision to permit entering different ISIN for two companies. There is no provision for merger ratio entry. Those assessee’s who are looking to file LTCG in merger cases and trying to use the provisions after January 31, 2018, are not able to do so.

Conclusion

The ministry, along with the government, must take adequate steps to sort out these technical issues with the new income tax portal. It has caused much frustration and wastage of time for the professionals. Therefore it should be resolved as soon as possible as the filing season is near.

Read our article:How to Register DSC in New Income Tax Portal?