The government of India collected around INR 1,45,867 crores as Goods and Services Tax (GST) in the month of November 2022. “GST is an excellent law which has subsumed almost 37 state and central taxes in its ambit and has led to ease of doing business across the country. However, its implementation was substandard,” Vivek Shah, a chartered accountant based in Delhi told AIM.

Unhappy with the performance of the GST portal over the last five years, Shah doubts the capabilities of the technology service provider—Infosys, which also prompted him to file an RTI.

“The primary reason to file this RTI was to understand how much of taxpayers money has been spent on the portal and to know if anyone is accountable for the mess that is created. The response of the department was quite evasive. They chose to ignore or not answer four out of the five questions asked. However, they have provided information about the cost paid to Infosys Ltd—which is INR 1,379.71 crores.” 

Over the years, multiple stakeholders have complained about the GST portal and how badly it has been maintained. In fact, many consultants claim that Infosys has failed miserably in handling the GST portal.

However, what raises even more eyebrows is that, despite its increasingly apparent shortcomings, the central government has failed to hold Infosys accountable so far. 

Issues with the portal

“Down time of the GST portal is the single biggest issue faced by the stakeholders,” Shah said. Besides prolonged downtime, technical glitches and inability to process large amounts of data simultaneously are just some of the issues with the GST portal. 

Chartered accountants sharing their frustrations on Twitter by pointing out the issues they face with Aadhar authentication, registration of TIN, OTP generation, denial of service, 404 errors, and more is almost an everyday occurrence.

While it is understandable that maintaining a portal to withstand the traffic of the entire country is an arduous task, the issues are way too recurrent to turn a blind eye to. 

@FinMinIndia @GST_Council @Infosys_GSTN while trying to enter credit note for urd dealer, portal not allowing to select #chhattisgarh. Remove @Infosys from gst portal. Worst software provider @Infosys_GSTN. pic.twitter.com/jcT8jku8Al

— CA Satyakam Arya (@satyakam67) December 12, 2022

Dear @cbic_india @FinMinIndia Are your GST officers of the rank of DC & Superintendent are so helpless before @Infosys_GSTN that they even can’t get registration restored which has been cancelled due to technical error even after raising multiple tickets @aniyadav17 @nsitharaman

— CA Jitender (Aman) Yadav (@caamanyadav) December 12, 2022

“In addition to this, at times, there are issues of auto-population of data on the GST portal,” Shah said.

Emphasising further on this, Pritam Mahure, a chartered accountant based in Pune told AIM that in certain cases, import ITC does not get auto-populated in GSTR-2A/2B of the taxpayer. Similarly, many taxpayers whose GST registration number is cancelled are unable to re-activate the same.

“GST was introduced without a robust IT system in place and that is one of the reasons that it has struggled due to technical glitches since its inception,” Mahure added.

Pradip Kapadia, who previously served as the President of GST Practitioners Association of Maharashtra (GSTPAM), also told AIM that the government needed to first run a trial period with the portal; however, they chose to jump the gun and we are now able to witness the consequences of that decision.

“GSTN was given a humongous task to design and develop a complex two-way flow portal, which had to be developed in very short time, able to withstand traffic of the entire country, among every changing rules/laws,” Gaurav Kenkre, a chartered accountant based in Goa, told AIM. 

Impact

Every time there is an issue with the GST Portal, it is the taxpayers who are always at the receiving end of it. “Sometimes taxpayers have had to face late fees and penalties etc for no fault of their own,” Kenkre said. 

“At times, clients feel that we are inefficient, whereas the actual problem lies with the portal. On many occasions, we have taken screenshots and sent them to our clients as proof of the portal not working,” Shah said.

The consultants are also at the receiving end of such bottlenecks many times because it is often difficult to explain to taxpayers that errors and delays are not necessarily due to the consultant’s laxity but due to the portal itself.

“Based on my discussions, I know that even the GST officers are struggling to get proper timely reports and data. We have seen many times that certain data which we can see on the front-end is not visible on the back-end to the GST officers,” Kenkre explained.

Accountability 

Despite its shortcomings, Shah said that Infosys was never charged any penalty. “They were not black listed either, instead, they were given another two contracts subsequently to develop the IT portal and the ROC portal,” Shah said.

It’s not that the government has not paid any heed to the outcry of the stakeholders over the years. Time and time again, the government has pulled up Infosys over the glitches on the portal. In fact, last year Infosys’ non-Executive Chairman Nandan Nilekani presented a new timeline for better services to the GST Council.

However, problems remain and many different stakeholders are of the opinion that there is a need for accountability. “This is taxpayers’ money going into Infosys’ pocket. When citizens pay taxes, the least that they expect is accountability,” Shah said. 

Kenkre believes that Infosys on its side will have all its defences ready. “Too little time given, laws changing too fast, no proper functional analysis given, limited budget etc. From an outsider’s perspective, the blame will have to be shared by all the people involved.”

Mahure also believes that blaming someone will not solve the problem. “Blaming someone will not solve the problem. I think the solution is that the GSTN/ GST Council should do an India-wide survey for improvements in the GST portal and plan to implement such suggestions over a period of next five years.”