Infosys sets up dedicated war room as deadline for ITR filings nears

Software major Infosys, which has drawn flak for glitches in the new income tax portal, has set up a dedicated war room to monitor the performance of the portal as the extended deadline of December 31 for filing income tax returns for FY21 approaches. 

As of December 15, 35.9 million income tax returns (ITR) have been filed on the new e-filing portal with the daily filings crossing 600,000 per day.

Senior finance ministry officials headed by Revenue Secretary Tarun Bajaj on Thursday met Infosys team led by company’s Managing Director and Chief Executive Officer Salil Parekh on the preparedness of the e-filing website during the peak filing period.

“As briefed by Infosys, steps taken in this regard include augmentation of the technical infrastructure and setting up of a dedicated war room to monitor the performance of the portal. On its part, Infosys assured about its preparedness to ensure a smooth filing season to instill confidence among the taxpayers,” the finance ministry said in a statement.

Out of the 35.9 million ITRs filed for assessment year 2021-22, 57.6 per cent are ITR1 (20.7 million), 8.3 per cent is ITR2 (297 million), 9.4 per cent is ITR3 (336.1 million), 23.4 per cent are ITR4 (840.5 million), ITR5 (312,000), ITR6 (133,000) and ITR7 (24,000). Nearly 52 per cent of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the balance have been uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities.

“It is encouraging to note that 31.1 million returns have been e-verified, out of which more than 26.9 million are through Aadhaar-based OTP. The process of e-verification through Aadhaar OTP and other methods is important for the Department to commence processing of the ITR and to issue refunds, if any,” the ministry said.

Of the e-verified ITRs, more than 23.8 million ITRs have been processed and over 909.5 million refunds for AY 2021-22 have been issued. Overall 983,000 digital signature certificates (DSCs) have been registered. “In the simplified process of DSC registration any individual has to register his DSC only once and can use it across any entity where the individual is a partner, director etc without having to re-register again against each entity or role,” the statement said.

The ministry said the Income Tax Department urges all taxpayers to view their Form 26AS and Annual Information Statement (AIS) through the e-filing portal to verify the accuracy of TDS and tax payments and avail of pre-filling of ITRs. 

“It is important for taxpayers to cross-check the data in the AIS statement with their bank passbook, interest certificate, Form 16, and capital gains statement from brokerages in case of purchase and sale of equity and mutual funds, etc,” it added.