ICAI Flags Major Glitches in Income-Tax Portal, Seeks Urgent CBDT Intervention
Recently, the Direct Taxes Committee (DTC) of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) informed that it had been receiving continuous mail (more than 1200) from its members expressing concerns on account of the technical glitches in the income tax portal. All mails were requesting the committee to send an appropriate representation to the CBDT for timely resolution.
Keeping all the mails in mind, the Direct Taxes Committee (DTC) of the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) has written a formal representation (ICAI/DTC/2025-26/Rep-12), dated September 22, 2025, to the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT), Ministry of Finance, requesting to address the concerns arising on account of the updated utilities and technical glitches in the Income-tax Portal.
In the representation, ICAI tried bringing government attention to the concerns faced by numerous taxpayers in Income Tax Return (ITR) filing and also the problems in filing the Tax Audit Report (TAR) for the financial year 2024-25 (TAR filing deadline: September 30, 2025). Additionally, highlighted issues are faced in the submission of Form 10AB for renewal of registration of trusts, for which the due date is September 30, 2025, in cases where registration falls due on April 01, 2026. Below are listed the major concerns highlighted in the mails received by ICAI from its members:
- Concerns in relation to Form 3CA-3CD/Form 3CB-3CD
This financial year, utilities for the Tax Audit Report (TAR) filing were released late on July 18, 2025, while last year, they were released on April 1st, 2024. Members are facing problems in filing their TAR due to glitches in the Income Tax Portal, like frequent login failures, OTP not delivered or delivered with significant delay, forced logouts, slow portal speed, and difficulty/error messages while attaching the statement of profit and loss and balance sheet, etc.
- Login issues on the Income Tax E-filing Portal
ICAI members also highlighted concerns on the accessibility and responsiveness of the Income Tax Portal, like login failures, difficulty in accessing the portal through certain browsers, frequent abrupt logouts/expiry of sessions, and substantial delays/lags on the portal causing difficulty in the timely filing of returns, and the portal shows a ‘Loading’ error for several minutes, and then, thereafter, ‘Service unavailable’ is displayed etc.
- Downloading AIS, TIS, and Form 26AS from the Income Tax E-Filing Portal
Members are facing issues while downloading the Annual Information Statement (AIS), Taxpayer Information Summary (TIS), and Form 26AS from the Income Tax Portal. The system is displaying ‘Service Unavailable.’
- Concerns relating to ITR Utilities
In this financial year 2024-25, the Excel utilities for the ITR 5, 6, and 7 were made available late in August 2025, and the offline utility for ITR-5 and ITR-7 was released on September 6 and 18, respectively. ITR-5 and ITR-7 forms were released on September 19, 2025, via online mode. Offline and online utility for ITR 6 is yet to be enabled as of this date. Members have expressed concern that the Excel utility of the department portal, if opened in an old version of Excel, shows error messages.
There are several other concerns that members of ICAI have highlighted in their emails. Refer to the formal representation for complete information. Below is the link to download.
