Online filing of Tax Audit Report
With effect from Assessment Year 2013-2014, it has become mandatory to file audit reports online by Chartered accountants using their digital signatures.
This is a good step in terms of curbing the mal practices wherein the tax audit reports were filed in Income Tax by using the membership number of Chartered Accountants. Earlier, only the membership number of professional was required to be filed with online Income Tax return in case of tax audit report and no signed copy was to be submitted to Income Tax department. As a result many fake filings have been done in the past by using the credentials of professionals without even their information.
A lot of representations were made by professionals to ICAI to prevent this malpractice. Finance Act 2013 has come up with the provision of online filing of audit reports to put a stop on this.
The detailed steps to file audit report online are as follows:
- Every professional is required to register himself/herself on the Income Tax online filing portal i.e. https://incometaxindiaefiling.gov.in/ under the heading Tax Professional. Select the heading “Chartered Accountant” and click “Submit”
- Fill in the details viz. membership number, date of enrollment, Name, Date of Birth, PAN etc.
After registration, a link to activate the on the email ID. The user ID of professional will be “ACRA” followed by his membership number for Example: ACRA123456.
- The next step is to be taken by the assessee whose accounts are required to be audited by the CA. Assessee will login to his account and add CA in the “Add CA “ option. Enter the membership number of CA. His name will appear if he is registered as a Tax Professional
- Tax audit report needs to be filled by CA from the utility available in Income Tax portal. The signed copy of Tax audit report needs to be attached with the same and xml is required to be uploaded from the login of professional.
- The tax audit report submitted by CA will be considered for final submission only when the assessee login from his account and approve the tax audit report. The assessee has right to reject the report also.
The process of filing including approval for audit under section 44AB has to be completed on or before 30th September, 2013.
Non Compliance of provisions of getting the accounts audited under section 44AB shall attract penalty under section 271B. The liability of penalty is half percent of turnover or Rs 150,000 whichever is less.
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