Direct Taxation

Income Tax Department validates Unique Document Identification Number generated from ICAI portal for Tax Audit Reports

26.11.2020

In continuation with the ongoing initiatives of the Income Tax Department for integrating with other Government agencies, Income-tax e-filing portal has completed its integration with the Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI) portal for validation of Unique Document Identification Number (UDIN) generated from ICAI portal by the Chartered Accountants for documents certified by them. This will help in weeding out fake or incorrect Tax Audit Reports not duly authenticated with the ICAI.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India, in its gazette notification dated 2nd August, 2019, had made generation of UDIN from ICAI mandatory for every kind of certificate/tax audit report and other attests made by their members as required by various regulators. This was introduced to curb fake certifications by non-CAs misrepresenting themselves as Chartered Accountants.

Further, Income-tax e-filing portal had already factored mandatory quoting of UDIN with effect from 27th April, 2020 for documents certified/attested in compliance with the Income-tax Act, 1961 by a Chartered Accountant. With this system level integration, UDIN provided for the audit reports/certificates submitted by the Chartered Accountants in the e-filing portal shall be validated online with the ICAI.

If for any reason, a Chartered Accountant was not able to generate UDIN before submission of audit report/certificate, the Income-tax e-filing portal permits such submission, subject to the Chartered Accountant updating the UDIN generated for the form within 15 calendar days from the date of form submission in the Income- tax e-filing portal. If the UDIN for the audit report/certificate is not updated within the 15 days provided for the same, such audit report/certificate uploaded shall be treated as invalid submission. One of the major benefits of applicability of UDIN is that, it addresses concern regarding authenticity of documents that are issued by any other person other than a Chartered Accountant and tracing of forged documents will be easier so that accountability and transparency in certification can be ensured.

Tags : Validation UDIN Tax Audit

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