Income tax e-filing, GSTN portals working 'pretty well': Infosys CEO Salil Parekh

The income tax e-filing and GST Network portals are working "pretty well" and the systems are running effectively, Infosys CEO Salil Parekh has said. Infosys has developed both the portals and is also the backend technology support provider.

In an interview to PTI, Parekh highlighted the high GST collections, and 5.8 crore I-T return filings within the set deadline of July 31 to assert that both of these are seeing a huge positive impact from the government's digital programme. The ITR (Income Tax Return) filings have been smooth, he said.

"It is working pretty well at this stage," Salil Parekh said when asked about I-T efiling and GSTN portals. The users of the e-filing portal had experienced difficulties when it was launched on June 7 last year and since then it has seen glitches happening on and off.

Asked if the glitches been resolved, Parekh affirmed all those had been sorted out. "In fact, July 31 was the deadline and on the last day, we had something like 70 lakh returns that were filed. And in some of the hours more than 5 lakh (returns were getting filed) per hour," Parekh said.

He also said that Infosys is in ongoing discussion with clients on what's happening on the GSTN and income tax return portal. "On the income tax filings, we had something like 5.8 crore returns that were filed. It was all done on schedule. There was a very smooth experience for the taxpayers. Of those, almost 70 lakh have already been processed... so the systems are working very effectively for the citizens and also for the tax department," he said.

The last date for filing ITR for 2021-22 fiscal by salaried individual was July 31. Over 47 percent of these ITRs have been filed using the online ITR form on the portal and the balance have been uploaded using the ITR form created from the offline software utilities. Parekh said Infosys is all geared up to implement the proposed changes in the monthly GST return form (GSTR-3B).

Last month, the finance ministry had last month circulated a paper suggesting changes in the monthly GST payment form and sought industry comments by September 15. The GST Council, comprising finance ministers of Centre and states, had in June decided to bring about some changes in the GSTR-3B form. Parekh said once those changes are aligned, it will implement the changes on the GSTN portal.

"Those will be developed and put in practice. We are very comfortable and I think so is the government that both on GSTN and the income tax portals, things are going very well at this stage," Parekh said. In 2019, Infosys was 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 government has paid Rs 164.5 crore to Infosys between January 2019 to June 2021 for developing the portal. In 2015, Infosys had won the Rs 1,380 crore-contract to build the technology platform for Goods and Services Tax (GST).