Surat CA Association Moves Gujarat High Court, Flagging Technical Glitches In Income Tax E-filing Portal

The Chartered Accountants Association of Surat have filed a petition before the Gujarat High Court highlighting non-operation and technical glitches in the Income Tax E-filing Portal. 

The petitioner has contended that since September the portal has experienced repeated outages wherein users have faced login failures, error codes, and stalled processing. The disruption is stated to have continued during crucial filing dates, and the failure continued in the form of Denial of Service on the extended due date of September 16 as well.

The petitioner contends that a detailed representation was made before the respondent authorities seeking time compensation on account of glitches in the portal however there has been no response to the same and no action has been taken. 

The petitioner contends that these outages have effectively denied taxpayers the ability to discharge their statutory obligations despite readiness to comply.

Among various reliefs sought, the plea filed by advocates Dr Avinash Poddar and Anchal Poddar, have sought directions to the Respondents to release ITR forms and the utilities by April 1 of every year and create accountability framework for delay. The plea further seeks a restriction on the pre-filing validations strictly to basic identity & structural checks. It also seeks that once income tax return is uploaded, it must be treated as filed, with any defect notice issued under Section 139(9) granting time to cure the same. 

It further seeks that all consequential interest under Section 234A and Section 234C, late fees under Section 234F, and penalties including the penalty under Section 271B be automatically waived or deemed condoned wherever delay can be demonstrated due to portal downtime, late release of utilities, or other system failures attributable to the respondents.

It further seeks constitution of an independent technical monitoring committee consisting of representatives from ICAI, National Informatics Centre, industry and technology experts, to carry out a quarterly audit the portal, publish the data on a public dashboard, and file status reports before the high court. It further seeks framing of Standard Operating Procedures for timely release of utilities and robust grievance redressal mechanism.

In the interim the petition seeks suspension and/or automatic waiver of interest under Sections 234A and 234C, late fees under Section 234F, and penalty exposures during the period between September 10-16, 2025 when the portal was partially or completely non-functional, due to which the assesses could not file ITR or pay Advance Tax.