The income tax filing deadline is approaching soon, forcing tax experts to file the forms latest by July 31. The taxpayers who are trying to file their income tax forms are facing difficulties because the website is not working properly.

The income tax department recently introduced a redesigned website where some taxpayer information, such as the data that can be found next to a person’s permanent account number (PAN) on income tax return forms, was prefilled. It will be very challenging for taxpayers and CAs to complete the ITR efficiently and accurately in the absence of data of advanced tax data on the internet being available.

Balwant Jain, Tax and investment expert said that “If the client fails to bring to attention to the CAs the advance tax on the presumption that the CA will be able to fetch it from the website, there is the likelihood of taxpayers receiving notices from the department. It will increase the workload and heartburn. The CBDT should specifically task some with a responsibility to constantly monitor the smooth functioning of the website and various functionalities,”

Maneet Pal Singh, Partner, I.P. Pasricha & Co. also added that “Formerly beyond FY 2022-23, the details of taxes paid i.e. advance tax & self-assessment tax use to appear in Form 26AS against a taxpayer’s PAN. Therefore, while filing the Income Tax Return, this amount is used to get auto-populated from Form 26AS as a pre-filling technique into the ITR form. However, this pre-filling technique feature is missing in upcoming tax filing forms which will be a tedious task as the Chartered accountants or any person filing the ITR will have to cross-check & fetch the challans and manually fill the details of taxes paid. This will be a tedious task and will require extra effort in tax filings,”

Also Read: 10 Essential Documents Required for Income Tax Return Filing in Financial Year 2022-23

People are having trouble filling out their forms because the pre-filled data cannot be retrieved correctly and requires human intervention from tax professionals.

Form 26AS, which was previously redesigned as an “Annual Information Statement,” now includes comprehensive information about some of the financial transactions, tax payments, tax demands, and refunds, and ongoing or concluded legal actions taken by a taxpayer during a specific financial year that must be included in income tax returns. This information is in addition to the TDS/TCS details.

The CBDT (Central Board of Direct Taxes) said in a statement that beginning with the 2016 financial year, “specified persons” including banks, mutual funds, institutions issuing bonds, and registrars were the sources of information the Department used to receive regarding cash deposits and withdrawals from savings bank accounts, sales and purchases of real estate, credit card payments, purchases of shares, debentures, foreign currency, mutual funds, and cash payments for goods and services, among other things.