Who should pay penalty in this case?

Your query is not legally proper and justified.  The same process is being followed in the entire country and not devised for one person in mind.   If you lack competencies in filing, take professional guidance and entrust the work to a professional to avoid the penalty.  For the failure of citizens, the idea of blaming the FM, PMO & IT is itself extreme, as there were no such complaints and the procedure, developments reduced many hurdles in the filing of returns and it is a general opinion that the site is always user friendly.  Please understand that a lot of inputs and brainstorming sessions of experts are necessary to arrive at a website formation and there are separate, independent agencies that conduct tests before operating such websites.

Dear Mr Rajesh, 

Please calm down and do not panic.  In case the problem persists, the CBDT will extend the date for filing the ITR. 

Regards

Shubham Bhardwaj (Advocate)

There appear to be many glitches in the new portal for filing Income Tax returns and Infosys the IT Company which is behind the designing and maintenance of the portal is working on it and Mr. Nandan Nilakeni had already publicly informed that the problems shall be solved by a certain date. Of course, that date has come and gone. The problem is not yours alone and it is applicable to everybody in the country and CA Association even suggested to FM to revert back to the old IT Portal. When I tried to file the Return, the pension paid to me is not prefilled or the 26 AS details are prefilled.

Do not worry about the due date. Last year it was extended till the end of December due to the pandemic situation in the country. This year besides the pandemic there is a problem with IT Portal itself. Surely, the date shall be extended (even during normal years it's extended up to the end of October). Meanwhile, keep all your documents and details in one place and once the Portal is working fine, you can easily file the return without much difficulty. The tendency to blame PM/FM for everything should go.

Just wait, you are not the only tax payer, all such citizens are facing same glitches, which is in the knowledge of CBDT.  

Since this is a universal problem, you may not be worried about it to this extent.

You can be in touch with your auditor about the latest developments and can file the returns through your auditor this time to overcome your problems.

You did not get my point. I am competent to file my return but should I file wrong return due to faulty website? Your point of taking professional help is fine because I transfer the responsibility, now the issue with website is their headache.

Many CAs have also expressed their dissatisfaction about faulty website on twitter.

Just to give an example, even though I clearly selected 'no outside India assets' in the form, at the final stage it automatically takes it as YES before submission, forcefully informing Income Tax that I have assets outside India???!!!

Would you submit a legally valid data about you if the information system on its own is making it look wrong? 

e.g. Just as an example, imagine there's say an Information System to file a case in court. You have clearly indicated that it's a civil case, but the system on its own takes it as Criminal case? Is this attributed to your competence or the failure of the system to provide correctly working system?

If you still submit, the judge is not going to look into the fact that there's a systemic error, they are going to reject your case stating that it's not criminal case. Then you will have to prove your point. Same is the case with the new IT Portal. If I submit now with all errors, I will get notices. If I don't submit on time, I pay penalty?? So Who's at fault?

At the present stage, the problem is too  hypothetical.