I-T portal: Finance ministry officials hold review meeting with Infosys chief

"As on December 15, 3.59 crore ITRs have been filed on the new e-filing portal of the

Nearly 52 percent of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the rest were  uploaded using the ITR created from the offline software utilities, the statement said. The ministry also said that it was encouraging to note that 3.11 crore returns have been e-verified and out of them, more than 2.69 crore were through Aadhaar-based OTP.

The process of e-verification through Aadhaar-based OTP and other methods is important for the department to commence processing of the ITR and to issue refunds, if any. The department has been issuing reminders to taxpayers through e-mails, SMS and media campaigns encouraging taxpayers to file their income tax returns without further delay.

"All taxpayers who are yet to file their ITRs for AY 2021-22 are requested to file their returns at the earliest," it said. Following glitches in the portal, the Income Tax Department had to allow manual filing of remittance forms and extended the due dates for electronic filing of forms related to intimation by pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.

The last date for filing ITR for 2020-21 fiscal is December 31, 2021. In 2019, Infosys was awarded the Rs 4,242 crore-contract to develop the portal. The project was aimed at developing a next-generation income tax filing system to reduce processing time for returns from 63 days to 1 day and to expedite refunds.

Between January 2019 to June 2021, the government paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys for developing the portal.