Income Tax Return: You Will Not Be Able To Use ITR e-Filing Portal From Today – Here’s Why

New Delhi: The taxpayers will not be able to use the income tax website for at least six days beginning Tuesday.

This as the Income Tax Department is going to launch its new e-filing portal www.incometax.gov.in on June 7.

The existing portal of the department at www.incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in  would not be available to taxpayers as well as other external stakeholders for a brief period of 6 days i.e. from June 1 to 6.

Surabhi Ahluwalia, Commissioner of Income Tax (Media and Technical Policy), had earlier said the new e-filing portal (www.incometax.gov.in ) is aimed at providing the taxpayer convenience and a modern, seamless experience to taxpayers.

She also listed the benefits of the new e-filing portal and guided the taxpayers regarding the same:

• New taxpayer friendly portal integrated with immediate processing of Income Tax Returns (ITRs) to issue quick refunds to taxpayers
• All interactions and uploads or pending actions will be displayed on a single dashboard for follow-up action by taxpayer
• Free of cost ITR preparation software available online and offline with interactive questions to help taxpayers fill ITR even without any tax knowledge, with prefilling, for minimizing data entry effort
• New call center for taxpayer assistance for immediate answers to taxpayer queries with FAQs, Tutorials, Videos and chatbot/live agent
• All key portal functions on desktop will be available on Mobile App which will be enabled subsequently for full anytime access on mobile network
• New online tax payment system on new portal will be enabled subsequently with multiple new payment options using net banking, UPI, Credit Card and RTGS/NEFT from any account of taxpayer in any bank, for easy payment of taxes

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Ahluwalia said the department will not fix any compliance dates during this period In order to avoid any inconvenience to the taxpayers.

“Further, directions have been issued to fix hearing of cases or compliances only from 10th June, 2021 onwards, to give taxpayers time to respond on the new system. If, any hearing or compliance which requires submissions online has been scheduled during this period, the same will be preponed or adjourned and the work items would be rescheduled after this period,” she said in a release earlier on May 20.

The Commissioner of Income Tax (Media and Technical Policy) further said the department has also intimated external entities including “Banks, MCA, GSTN, DPIIT, CBIC, GeM, DGFT who avail services of PAN verification etc. about the non-availability of the services and to request them to make arrangements to ensure that their customers/stakeholders are apprised, so that any relevant activity can be completed prior to or after the blackout period”.