The issue of technical glitches at the government’s tax portals has resurfaced, putting service provider Infosys on the spot.

With snags in the goods and services tax network (GSTN), the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) on Tuesday directed the IT company to find an “early resolution”. Also, the board said it was considering extending the due date for GST returns filing for April, a move that could hit the government’s tax receipts for the month.

“Considering the difficulties faced by taxpayers in filing their GSTR-3B for the month of April 2022, a proposal to extend the due date of filing GSTR-3B for April 2022 is under active consideration. Inconvenience caused to the taxpayers is regretted,” the CBIC tweeted.

“A technical glitch has been reported by @Infosys_GSTN in generation of April 22 GSTR-2B & auto-population of GSTR-3B on portal… Technical team is working to provide GSTR-2B &correct auto-populated GSTR-3B at the earliest,” the board added.

Form GSTR-2B is a system-generated statement reflecting input tax credit (ITC) details. Form GSTR-3B is a simplified monthly summary return and the purpose of the return is for taxpayers to declare their summary GST liabilities for a particular tax period and discharge these liabilities.

Reconciliation of GSTR-2A (real-time update of ITC) and GSTR-2B (ITC statement for the month) with GSTR-3B is needed to avoid notices due to excess input tax credit (ITC) claims in GSTR-3B.

On Sunday, GSTN had issued an advisory saying that in a few cases, certain records are not reflected in the GSTR-2B statement for the period of April 2022, and asked taxpayers to file GSTR-3B returns on a self-assessment basis using GSTR-2A. This advisory was quietly removed from the GSTN website on Tuesday.

Chartered accountants have been complaining about their inability to access the GSTN portal and file tax-related documents before the deadline.

Before the due date for filing GSTR3B in January 2021, taxpayers and professionals had to struggle to file returns with the GSTN portal. In December 2020, filing of returns in the MCA21 was affected due to glitches.

In 2015, Infosys was awarded a Rs 1,380-crore contract to build and maintain the GSTN. In fact, Infosys is also the vendor for two other key government portals — income tax e-filing portal and MCA21 of corporate affairs ministry – which have also plagued by technical glitches from time to time.

“Dear Taxpayers, we have again received complaints of denial of access to the portal and are working to resolve it. Inconvenience caused is regretted,” Team Infosys-GSTN had tweeted on January 21, 2021.

With technical problems affecting taxpayer services eight days after the launch of new income tax e-filing portal in June, senior finance ministry officials will be holding an interactive meeting on June 22 with vendor Infosys officials on the glitches. But, the glitches persisted.

“The Finance Minister demanded that the issues faced by taxpayers on current functionalities of the portal should be resolved by the team by 15th September, 2021 so that taxpayers and professionals can work seamlessly on the portal,” the finance ministry said in a statement on August 23, 2021.