ITR Filing 2026: CBDT upgrades income tax portal before July 31 deadline, Key changes explained
With the July 31 deadline for filing income tax returns (ITRs) for Assessment Year (AY) 2026-27 approaching, the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) has strengthened the Income Tax Department’s e-filing portal to ensure taxpayers can file returns without disruption during the peak filing period.
In a written reply to the Lok Sabha on July 21, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary said the department has upgraded the portal’s infrastructure and operational readiness after analysing issues faced during previous filing seasons. The government added that although some taxpayers may occasionally experience slower response times during periods of heavy traffic, the portal has largely remained stable despite a significant increase in usage.
What has CBDT changed ahead of the filing deadline?
According to the Finance Ministry, the e-filing ecosystem has been performance-tested and validated to process up to 1 crore income tax returns in a single day, significantly higher than the current filing volumes.
To support this capacity, the department has expanded computing resources, storage, memory, network infrastructure and internet bandwidth. It has also rectified major infrastructure issues that had affected earlier return filing seasons.
The government said a dedicated 24×7 monitoring framework has been put in place, including a central “War Room” to continuously monitor portal performance and respond to technical issues, if any.
On the cybersecurity front, the Income Tax Department has upgraded firewall systems, strengthened protection against cyber and bot attacks, and improved coordination mechanisms to safeguard the portal during periods of heavy usage.
The CBDT has also coordinated with several external agencies that support the filing ecosystem, including the Unique Identification Authority of India (UIDAI), the Reserve Bank of India (RBI), banks, Central Depository Services Ltd (CDSL), National Securities Depository Ltd (NSDL), the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) and e-Return Intermediaries (ERIs). According to the government, these measures are intended to ensure uninterrupted service delivery throughout the filing season.
Portal usage has risen sharply
The Finance Ministry said traffic on the portal has increased substantially compared with last year.
Between July 8 and July 14, daily ITR filings more than doubled year-on-year on several days. On July 14 alone, taxpayers filed 12.22 lakh returns, while daily logins touched nearly 99 lakh. Overall transactions on the portal, including logins, return filings, challan payments and Form 26AS-related services, reached around 1.61 crore on that day.
The government said the enhanced infrastructure has enabled the portal to handle this higher transaction volume while remaining operational.
Service provider penalised for delays and outages
The Finance Ministry also informed Parliament that the managed service provider (MSP) responsible for developing and maintaining the Income Tax Department’s e-filing portal has been penalised under the terms of its contract.
According to the reply, penalties have been imposed for delays in delivering the Income Tax Business Application (IEC 2.0) project, lower service-level performance over multiple assessment periods, application outages during the peak filing season in FY2025-26, and situations where filing deadlines had to be extended for reasons attributable to the service provider.
While the written reply does not identify the MSP by name, Infosys is the technology partner responsible for developing and managing the income tax e-filing portal.
