ITR filing 2026: CBDT takes these steps to prevent portal glitches before July 31 deadline

As the income tax return (ITR) filing deadline of July 31 approaches, concerns over slow response times and login issues on the income tax e-filing portal have resurfaced. Responding to these concerns in the Parliament, the government has said that while some taxpayers might occasionally experience delays during periods of heavy traffic, the ITR filing portal had largely remained stable despite a sharp rise in usage this year.

In a written reply, Minister of State for Finance, Pankaj Chaudhary, has said in the Parliament that ITR filings between July 8 and July 14 more than doubled year-on-year on several days, touching 12.22 lakh returns on July 14, while daily logins rose to nearly 99 lakh.

The Finance Ministry also disclosed that managed service provider, Infosys, has faced contractual penalties over delays in delivering the upgraded e-filing project, lower service performance, application outages during peak filing periods and extensions of ITR deadlines attributable to the service provider.

What steps has the CBDT taken to strengthen the ITR portal?

When asked, Chaudhary said that the CBDT has taken various measures to further strengthen the infrastructure of the e-filing portal ahead of the peak filing period, including the following:

• The e-filing ecosystem has been improved and performance tested to support peak filing volumes, with a validated capability to process up to 1 crore ITRs per day.
• Infrastructure capacity has been enhanced across compute, storage, memory, network and bandwidth.
• Major infrastructure issues identified during the earlier ITR filing seasons have been rectified.
• A robust monitoring and governance framework comprising 24×7 infrastructure monitoring, a dedicated WarRoom.
• Security infrastructure has been upgraded with the latest firewall versions, enhanced prevention mechanisms attack and bot attack and improved coordination to enhance protection against cyber threats during the peak filing period.
• End-to-end operational readiness has been strengthened through collaboration with key external stakeholders such as the UIDAI, banks, RBI, CDSL, NSDL, ICAI, ERIs, and relevant internal verticals, as well as structured governance, escalation mechanisms and continuous readiness reviews to ensure uninterrupted service delivery during the ITR filing season.

What are the penalties imposed on the managed service provider?

The minister replied that the penalties imposed on the relevant Managed Service Provider (MSP) as per contractual terms in this context are as under:

• The MSP was supposed to launch the IEC 2.0 project, including the e-filing portal, for taxpayers in July 2020. However, they were unable to meet the deadline. As a result, the MSP faced a penalty of 'liquidated damages.'
• IEC 2.0 MSPs are evaluated based on their Service Levels Score, which includes operational lapses and significant downtime. The Service Levels Score is measured quarterly, and MSPs face penalties for lower performance for 12 quarters.
• The MSP has to make all efforts to maintain application performance levels of the e-filing portal and avoid application outage, especially during peak filing period. Penalty for application outage during peak period in e-filing services has been imposed upon the MSP in FY 2025-26.
• The MSP is liable for penalty if the due date of ITR filing or any other pre-notified date gets extended on account of any reasons attributable to the MSP. Penalty on this count has been imposed upon the MSP in FY 2025-26.