Income Tax Portal
Government of India is implementing digitization at a rapid pace in the field of Direct Taxes. In the process a new Income Tax Portal was launched on 6th of June, 2021 with an intention to improve the functioning of income tax portal and to facilitate and ease the filing of Income Tax Returns and various forms under Income Tax Act and to E-File the TDS/TCS returns by the assessee. In addition to this the new portal was also intended to improve the functioning in respect of filing of appeal, various assessment and appellate proceedings. The new assessment and appellate procedure is now faceless to reduce the human interface. It is surprising that even after 3 months of launching of the new portal the same is not functioning properly. It shows that the launching of the new portal was a hasty step and was not put to trail before throwing it open for the assesses and tax practitioners. It is giving sleepless nights to the tax professionals and the assessees are compelled to put on hold their important compliances giving rise to financial losses. Honorable Delhi High Court observed in the course of Judgment that “the public at large should be asked to use the software after it has been tested prior in time on a sufficiently large sample base of assessee”