The hot topic in the market is GST Annual Return and GST Audit. As always, ICAI has come up with the technical guide to facilitate the people to learn and avoid mistakes while filling Annual returns and Annual GST Audit.
The copy of audited annual accounts and a reconciliation statement, duly certified, in Form GSTR-9C has to be submitted on or before the 31st Day of December by the tax payer.
In this regard, the Government has notified Form GSTR-9C on 13th September, 2018 vide Notification No. 49/2018 of Central Tax; comprising Reconciliation Statement and Certification, which needs to be certified by the Chartered Accountants.
Now, the practitioners have an opportunity as well as responsibility to implement and comply with it properly. Hence, to assist all the members, ICAI has come up with the publications on Technical guide on GST Annual Return and GST Audit. I am pretty sure that this publication will be very useful for all of us to discharge their duties properly.
An attempt has been made in this guide to cover areas that are related to the basic principles, policies and special issues pertaining to conduct of a Goods and Services Tax Audit; drawing up reconciliation statement in Form GSTR-9C and certifying; assistance in filing GSTR-9 Form. This paper does not deal with legal interpretations and rulings. This does not contain answers to all the problems that may arise in the day-to-day audit work. In such cases, the GST auditor may have to apply his mind judiciously, keeping in view the intent behind the law, principles and policies.
The practical difficulties faced in filling these forms have been highlighted to the Government which are available at http://idtc.icai.org/budget-memorandum.html . Answers to them are awaited from the Government.
Future changes in the GST Acts, Rules thereon, administrative policies and procedures may require changes to this guide from time to time.
The members who have already started assisting in filing of the Form-9 or conduct of the GST audits and those planning to start immediately could refer to this guide and offer the practical issues arising therefrom.
While, the general scheme of audit, the detailed steps, filling of forms and certification are outlined in the main part of the book, the references and sample documents are incorporated in Annexure and Appendix such as Standard Audit Program, Check list, Audit Working Papers, Notifications, etc. Therefore, these documents should also be perused to understand the entire gamut of the audit scheme under the GST Laws.
