Why is filing taxes in India harder than filing a patent?

Why is #TaxFiling in India harder than filing a patent?
I spent my entire Sunday struggling with the Income Tax portal, and I’m still not done!
Despite being educated, tech-savvy, and fairly good understanding of taxation, the portal design makes it nearly impossible to file returns on your own, unless one really has lots of patience!

Here are some of the pain points:
- The govt. already has all my #equity trading data. Why can’t they auto-populate it in the required format instead of making me struggle with filing the same data in different formats in different schedules!
- Private #fintech apps have clean interfaces and deep integrations with brokers. The Government has all the info already available in AIS (Annual Information Statement), they just need to take a step ahead!
- #NPS deduction - By default, for the majority, its eligibility is shown as zero! Why, since the salary breakdown doesn't have an NPS line item? When an employee's contribution to NPS deduction is allowed in both tax regimes, why can't the system understand these basis validations!
- And the best, #Validation errors show up only at the last page, in cryptic language. Wouldn’t it make sense to show errors in the section itself, or at least provide direct links to fix them?

It almost feels as if the portal is designed to be complicated, to keep the ecosystem of tax filers alive.
Pay astronomical taxes → struggle every day for basic infra needs → then pay someone else to help file tax returns! At least the government should make tax filing free for the actual taxpayers!

If India can build UPI, ONDC, and Aadhaar-scale systems, why not a world-class tax filing platform that is frictionless and intuitive!
Or maybe the government would say, Stop complaining, there is already a solution available that enables you to file taxes for Rs 24! Can't you even spend so much!!!