Good news for taxpayers! Now you can file ITR in a jiffy and refund will come immediately – ..

New Delhi: There is going to be a big change in the e-filing ITR portal for filing income tax returns. This will provide more convenience to the taxpayers. According to an Economic Times report, an internal circular from the department has revealed that a new ITR e-filing portal IEC 3.0 will be launched soon. The process for this has started. According to the internal circular, the operational phase of the existing Integrated e-Filing and Centralized Processing Center (IEC) 2.0 is coming to an end. With this, IEC 3.0 will take its place as a new project. Let us know about it.

What is IEC project?

IEC project provides e-filing platform. It allows taxpayers to file their ITR electronically, submit regular forms and access many other services. An important part of the IEC project is the Centralized Processing Center (CPC). It takes the responsibility of processing ITRs filed with the help of e-filing portal and ITBA. In addition, IEC also provides a back-office (BO) portal. Through this, field officers can access taxpayer filing and processing data.

How will IEC 3.0 help?

The internal circular states that Project IEC 3.0 is not intended to merely continue the services offered by Project IEC 2.0. Rather a better system has to be established. Necessary improvements are to be made in the processing of ITR. With the new system, new technology is to be used to speed up the processing of ITR, so that the taxpayer can get the refund quickly. Additionally, this may reduce the shortcomings and complaints of IEC 2.0.

What will be the benefit?

Chartered accountant Ashish Neeraj says the shift from IEC 2.0 to IEC 3.0 could bring a more user-friendly experience for taxpayers. Stricter data quality checks should be implemented in IEC 3.0. Last year in IEC 2.0, taxpayers and professionals faced problems like downloading ITR forms, downloading 26AS, server related glitches, issues in challan payment etc., which can be rectified in IEC 3.0. The internal circular said that Project IEC 3.0 will have a wide-ranging impact on the functioning of the department and the general public in the coming years. Therefore, it is important for the Income Tax Department to seek opinions and suggestions to make the IEC 3.0 project user friendly.

Why is it necessary to upgrade?

Hardik Kakadiya, President, Chartered Accountants Association, Surat (CAAS), says that no e-commerce platform crashes during festive sale offers. At the same time, problems keep arising in the ITR e-filing portal. A petition has been filed in the Gujarat High Court on behalf of CAAS regarding problems in the Income Tax portal. Therefore, if one acts wisely and upgrades the portal in time, not only problems can be avoided but many lawsuits can also be avoided.