50 Thousand GST Notices sent to companies after GST Audit

The goods and services tax (GST) authorities have issued around 50,000 show-cause notices (SCN) to several com­panies and partnership firms, based on the findings of the GST Departmental audit exercise.

This is the first comprehen­sive audit exercise since the inception of the GST regime. It has covered annual GST returns filed by firms in the first two years of the Financial Year 2017- 18 and 2018-19; in some cases, the audit has even covered Financial Year 2019-20 and 2020-21.

The audit of companies by the GST authorities is in addition to the GST audit. This Audit is also known as Departmental Audit. GST Audit by Chartered Accountant/ Cost Accountant was abolished by Finance Act 2021.

The SCNs have been served after scrutinizing several documents dur­ing the audit under different Sections of the Central GST (CGST) Act, depending on the issue being flagged during the audit.

The notices served could be for different reasons, like mis-declaration, tax not paid, short-payment of tax, wrongly availed input-tax credit (ITC), incorrect clas­sification of goods/services and export items, sale mismatch, GSTR-1, and GSTR-3B mismatch, etc.

Until September, around 20,000 notices had been served to firms where inconsistencies were found. Over 30,000 notices were issued after that. The exercise is ongoing as an audit is done in 3 months for large businesses; sometimes it goes on for six months if there are complexities. Audit for small business is completed  Such exercises are sig­nificant as they help detect irregularities and fix business issues, and improve returns,” said one of the officials cited above.

The Departmental Audits were picked after scrutinizing more than one Lakh GST registered accounts.