If you were planning on filing your Income Tax return (ITR) this weekend using the tax department’s new tax filing portal, then you should know that the website will not be available for a certain amount of time between Saturday and Sunday. A ticker on the new Income Tax portal says: “Alert: Website will not be accessible due to scheduled maintenance activity from Saturday 23^rd Oct 10.00 pm to Sunday 24^th Oct 10.00 am IST.” 

Due to this downtime, you will not able to access the e-filing portal to file your ITR, register yourself as legal heirs, register your digital signature for verification of tax return, check information regarding or download your Form 26AS, etc. 

These sorts of scheduled maintenance are common in banks; even the Reserve Bank of India announces downtime for services, like RTGS, NEFT and so on, from time to time. 

Since the launch of the new Income Tax portal in June 2021, the portal has been marred with glitches. Users (like DIY tax filers, charted accountants) of the website have complained about incomplete/wrong data related to previous year ITR filing, the portal being slow, non-availability of various Income Tax-related forms for compliances, etc. Many have taken to social media to complain about the issues they were facing.