Finance Ministry summoned Salil Parekh, the chief executive officer of Asia’s second-largest software services provider, asked him in August to explain why the glitches in the country’s new electronic tax filing portal had yet to be fixed.
Infosys had till date to fix the system.
Since the portal went live on June 8, taxpayers have faced technical glitches, errors and challenges in accessing several functions within the portal or website, which has angered them as well as the finance ministry.
Even though the government has extended the ITR filing deadline for individual taxpayers to December 31, 1% interest is being levied for each month of delay beyond the original July 31 deadline, raising questions about Huh. North Block Penalizing taxpayers for administrative failures.
The finance minister and officials of the revenue department had earlier also held detailed talks with the top executives of the company to resolve the matter. The meeting, which was attended by tax practitioners, highlighted several glitches with respect to services on the 2.0 version of the e-filing portal.
In January 2019, Infosys emerged as the lowest bidder for a Rs 4,242-crore contract for the Integrated E-Filing and Central Processing Center project, which was to be deployed and managed for about nine years. Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Choudhary told Parliament in July that so far the government has paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys for the project.