‘I am a CA, have no such complaint’: Amid I-T portal glitches, trader’s post on CA’s ‘sleepless nights’ sparks debate

A trader revealed that her chartered accountant is having sleepless nights in the office due to frequent glitches in the income tax portal, which is funded by taxpayers’ money.

In a post on the social media platform X, Aakanksha Gupta wrote, “My CA told me that he has not gone home and spending sleepless nights in his office since last 3 days because one IT company who took billions of dollars of taxpayers money, to build the income tax portal, has done such shoddy work that the website crashes every hour (sic).”

“What an irony that we pay tax to fund a portal which does not work when we pay taxes,” she added.

Responding to Gupta’s claim, a CA highlighted that he did not face any issues with the income tax portal while emphasising the need for more efficiency. He further questioned the need for filing the ITR afew days before the deadline.

“I am a Chartered Accountant and have no such complaint but yes I agree that portal should have better efficiency. At the same time work culture should be such that work does not have to wait last moment for completion,” Sanjay Goyal commented.

Reacting to his claim, Gupta noted, “Fair point on planning. However, the issue isn’t the deadline rush; the investment should have guaranteed stability, regardless of the date.”

What did netizens say?

Several other social media users commented under Gupta’s post. Most questioned why ITR is being filed at the last moment. Some resonated with the ITR portal issue, while others suggested possible solutions.

“Maybe it’s a technical issue that often happens when traffic jumps astronomically all of a sudden. It can happen to any website,” one of the users commented.

“No its because people keep coming at last minute to file returns and he is accepting this. And doing all the filing in the last moments rather than doing it in last 30 days. Its not that system was ready from apr but he must’ve had 30 odd days. Its not on IT company entirely(sic),” added another user.

“Why does everyone wait for the last few days of deadlines to file tax returns. It is bound to create disruption,” one of the users said.

“Website is not crashing. Your CA may be using a software (there are many) as front end application. That application may be having problems. Prepare your ITR by using the tool provided in income tax website. It works very well. I have used the same for ITR1, 2 & 3,” flagged another user.

“Not entirely a problem of the portal. I filed returns of my family members without any hassles but in July and Aug. The problem is problem wake up at the last moment. Systems are not built to work at peak for a prolonged period,” one of the users wrote.