The Rajasthan High Court has disposed of the plea seeking removal of Glitches in the Income Tax Portal.
The PIL has been filed by the Tax Bar Association of Jodhpur pointing out various difficulties faced by the assessees on account of the official portal of the income tax department having various glitches. The petitioners’ grievance is that unless and until all glitches on the official portal are removed, any extension of the time limit would be illusory. In other words, if the department grants only the time extension for filing the returns and audit reports but the portal does not accept the proper declaration, such a time extension would be of no consequence. Consequently, the prayer made by the petitioners is to give direction to the income tax department to remove all the defects and glitches in the official portal.
The division bench of Chief Justice Akil Kureshi and Justice Rekha Borana held that the prayers made by the petitioners in this respect are rather wide and non-specific. “At this stage, we leave it to the administration to deal with these issues at its level. We are hopeful that proper resolution of the difficulties of assessees would be made at the level of the administration itself without the requirement of Court’s intervention,” the court added.
“We are of the view that at this stage, we are not inclined to entertain the same. Firstly, as noted, there has been across a board extension of the last dates for compliances. Presumably, these extensions are granted because the Government of India had realized that on account of technical difficulties, several assesses may not have been in a position to make the compliances,” the court said.
The court noted that there is nothing for us to presume that the administration is not cognizable of such defects and that proper steps for removing of such defects would be taken so that the extension of the last date for compliances does not remain illusory but the assesses can meaningfully take advantage of such extension.
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