Taxpayers, who were planning to file their taxes this weekend using the tax department’s new income tax portal, should know the website will not be available for a certain amount of time between Saturday and Sunday.

As per a ticker on the new income tax portal, “Alert: Website will not be accessible due to scheduled maintenance activity from Saturday 23rd Oct 10.00PM to Sunday 24th Oct 10.00AM IST”.

The income tax portal will undergo a scheduled maintenance activity during a particular period of time this weekend.

Due to this downtime, you will not able to access the e-filing portal to file your ITR, register yourself as legal heirs, register your digital signature for verification of tax return, check information regarding or download your Form 26AS etc.

The new income tax e-filing portal ‘www.incometax.gov.in’ was launched on June 7 by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman.

IT company 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 Centre has so far paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys between January 2019 to June 2021 for developing the e-filing portal.

Even since the new income tax return filing portal was launched earlier this year, it has been plagued with technical glitches. IT major Infosys has drawn serious flak for the glitches in the portal.

At a press briefing after company’s results, Infosys CEO and MD Salil Parekh said, “As of yesterday we had over 1.9 crore returns that have been filed using the new system. Today the income tax return forms one through seven, are all functional. Most of the statutory or several other statutory forms are available on the system.”

Over the past month, the Income Tax portal has been further bolstered, Parekh said adding that the system has seen a steady increase in usage over the last few weeks.

Users have complained of issues like login failure, errors in calculating interest as well as inability to e-verify the ITR after filing among other issues. The discrepancies were far too wide forcing none other than the Finance Minister herself to look into the matter.

On August 22 the Ministry of Finance summoned Infosys CEO Salil Parekh to Delhi after the e-filing portal went unavailable for “emergency maintenance” for 2 whole days. After his meeting, the top boss told the media that users would soon have a glitch-free experience. The Finance Ministry even gave Infosys until September 15 to fix glitches in the new portal that has troubled users for months.

Source: https://www.timesnownews.com/business-economy/personal-finance/income-tax/article/alert-taxpayers-new-income-tax-online-portal-will-be-unavailable-for-12-hours-this-weekend/825758