GST Audit Support in Defence Colony Nerkundram, Chennai

Sub-section (1) of Section 65 of the Central Goods and Services Tax Act empowers the Commissioner, or any officer authorised by him through a general or specific order, to undertake audit of any registered person for such period, frequency and manner as may be prescribed. Sub-section (2) provides that the audit may be conducted either at the place of business of the registered person or at the office of the proper officer. It is to be noted that this provision is the substantive source of departmental audit jurisdiction and is read with Rule 101 for procedural mechanics.

Sub-section (1) of Section 66 provides that if at any stage of scrutiny, inquiry, investigation or any other proceedings, the officer not below the rank of Assistant Commissioner, having regard to the nature and complexity of the case and the interest of revenue, is of the opinion that the value has not been correctly declared or the credit availed is not within the normal limits, he may, with prior approval of the Commissioner, direct the registered person to get the records including books of account examined and audited by a chartered accountant or a cost accountant nominated by the Commissioner.

Sub-rule (1) of Rule 101 provides that the period of audit shall be a financial year or part thereof or multiples thereof. Sub-rule (2) prescribes Form GST ADT-01 for the audit notice. Sub-rule (4) directs the proper officer, on conclusion of audit, to record the audit observations in his audit notes and to inform the registered person of the discrepancies, who may file his reply. Sub-rule (5) prescribes Form GST ADT-02 for communication of audit findings.

Sub-section (4) of Section 65 prescribes that the audit shall be completed within three months from the date of commencement of the audit. The proviso permits the Commissioner, where satisfied that the audit cannot be completed within three months for reasons to be recorded in writing, to extend the period by a further period not exceeding six months. The expression date of commencement is defined in the Explanation to mean the date on which the records and other documents called for by the tax authorities are made available by the registered person, or the actual institution of audit at the place of business, whichever is later.

Sub-section (7) of Section 65 provides that where the audit results in detection of tax not paid or short paid, erroneously refunded, or input tax credit wrongly availed or utilised, the proper officer may initiate action under Section 73 or Section 74. It is to be noted that this sub-section is the statutory bridge between the audit conclusion and adjudication proceedings.

Sub-section (6) of Section 65 requires the proper officer, on conclusion of audit, to inform the registered person within thirty days of the findings, the registered person's rights and obligations, and the reasons for such findings. The communication is issued in Form GST ADT-02. It is to be noted that the thirty-day window is mandatory and starts on the date of conclusion of audit, not the date of the audit report.

What is a GST audit and where does it sit in the compliance architecture

Statutory framework under Chapter XIII of the CGST Act

The audit framework under the Central Goods and Services Tax Act 2017 is contained in Chapter XIII, comprising Sections 65, 66 and 71. Section 65 provides for departmental audit, Section 66 for special audit by a Chartered Accountant or Cost Accountant nominated by the Commissioner, and Section 71 for access to business premises by an authorised officer. The Empowered Committee 2009 First Discussion Paper had envisaged audit as the principal verification layer in a self-assessment regime, replacing the pre-GST pattern of routine assessment under the VAT/CST framework. The architecture is risk-based: not every registered person is audited; selection is driven by Section 65(2) read with internal CBIC risk-management directions which factor in turnover scale, sectoral risk profile, prior compliance history and reconciliation gaps surfaced in GSTR-9C self-certification. The audit-process closure under Section 65(7) feeds either into a no-objection certificate, a voluntary DRC-03 payment, or an SCN under Section 73 or Section 74 depending on whether tax has been short-paid, short-collected or wrongly availed as ITC.

Audit versus assessment versus inspection

Audit under Section 65 or 66 is conceptually distinct from assessment under Sections 61 (scrutiny of returns) and 62 (best-judgement assessment of non-filers) and from inspection / search / seizure under Section 67. Scrutiny under Section 61 is a desk-review of returns by the proper officer who issues ASMT-10 on discrepancies; the registered person responds in ASMT-11; closure or escalation follows. Audit is broader — Section 65(5) permits examination of the books, returns, statements, declarations and other documents to verify correctness of turnover declared, taxes paid, refund claimed and ITC availed, plus assessment of compliance with the Act. Inspection under Section 67 is targeted enforcement upon reason-to-believe of tax evasion and is invasive — premises access, seizure of records and goods. The OECD Forum on Tax Administration's compliance-pyramid model recommends graduated escalation from desk review to field audit to inspection, and the Indian framework broadly mirrors that design.

Self-certification under GSTR-9C and its audit interplay

Until Finance Act 2021 amendments, Section 35(5) had required certification of GSTR-9C by a Chartered Accountant or Cost Accountant for registered persons whose aggregate turnover exceeded the prescribed threshold. The Finance Act 2021 substituted Section 35(5) and amended Section 44, shifting GSTR-9C to a self-certified reconciliation statement filed by the registered person without third-party attestation, effective FY 2020-21 onwards (Notification 29/2021-CT). The reconciliation in GSTR-9C between audited financial statements and GSTR-9 annual return is now an internal-control disclosure; it does not substitute for departmental audit under Section 65. Audit teams treat GSTR-9C self-certified reconciliations as primary working papers — Table 5 (turnover reconciliation), Table 9 (tax payable reconciliation) and Table 12-14 (ITC reconciliation) become the starting points of Section 65 audit interrogation.

ADT-01 intimation

Risk-engine selection and audit-pool composition

ADT-01 intimations are not randomly issued; selection is driven by the GSTN risk engine combined with CBIC Audit Manual sectoral profiles. The risk engine factors include sharp variances between GSTR-1 and GSTR-3B, between GSTR-2A and GSTR-3B Table 4(A), between GSTR-9 and audited financial statements (via GSTR-9C), unusually high refund claims, sector-specific red flags (e.g. inverted-duty sectors, real-estate developers under Notification 03/2019-CT(R)), and prior-audit findings. The risk-based architecture aligns with the GST Council 47th and 53rd meeting recommendations on focusing enforcement on high-risk taxpayer cohorts while reducing nuisance audits of compliant small taxpayers. Knowing one's risk-profile drivers helps the registered person anticipate audit topics and prepare working papers accordingly.

Form, contents and statutory basis

Form GST ADT-01 is the audit-initiation intimation prescribed under Rule 101(2) of the CGST Rules 2017. The form is generated by the proper officer (or audit officer authorised by the Commissioner) and served on the registered person at least fifteen working days before the date proposed for commencement of audit. ADT-01 contains the GSTIN and legal name of the registered person, the period proposed to be audited (typically one financial year), the place where audit will be conducted (place of business or office of the proper officer), the date of audit commencement, and a schedule of documents to be made available — books of account, invoices, returns including GSTR-9 and GSTR-9C, declarations, internal-audit reports, agreements material to the tax position, and any other document the audit team specifies. The fifteen-day window is a statutory taxpayer right under Section 65(3) read with Rule 101(2).

Responding to ADT-01 — documentation readiness

Upon receipt of ADT-01, the registered person's first task is to map the document-schedule against actual maintained records and identify any gaps. Where records are incomplete (typically Rule 56 stock registers, Rule 89 refund working papers, or reverse-charge self-invoices under Section 31(3)(f)), the fifteen-day window is the opportunity for reconstruction. The Goetze (India) v CIT (2006) Supreme Court principle on the inability to make fresh claims outside the return framework (decided in the income-tax context) is sometimes invoked at the audit stage to deny ITC claims not appearing in original returns; the counter-position rests on Section 16(4) timeline arguments and the principle that audit is a verification not a re-assessment. Document submission within the fifteen-day window aligns the formal commencement of audit under Section 65(4) Explanation and tightens the three-month closure clock.

ADT-02 audit report

Voluntary payment under Section 73(5) post ADT-02

Section 73(5) of the CGST Act allows the registered person to pay the tax along with interest under Section 50 on the basis of own ascertainment or as ascertained by the proper officer and inform the proper officer of such payment in Form DRC-03 before service of an SCN under Section 73(1). Where the registered person agrees with the ADT-02 findings, voluntary payment under Section 73(5) avoids the SCN cycle entirely and limits the financial impact to tax plus interest, without penalty. Section 73(6) then mandates that no SCN shall be issued in respect of the amount paid. This voluntary-payment route is the preferred audit-closure mechanism for genuine ITC errors, classification mis-applications and minor valuation gaps, and is widely used in practice.

Disagreement options post ADT-02

Where the registered person disagrees with one or more ADT-02 findings, the response options are: (a) file a Section 75 representation seeking re-consideration before the SCN stage; (b) await the SCN under Section 73 or 74 and contest at that stage; (c) where the audit findings are perceived as jurisdictionally infirm, file a writ petition before the Madras High Court under Article 226 of the Constitution. The writ remedy is typically reserved for jurisdictional infirmities — absence of Commissioner approval under Section 66, breach of the Section 65(4) timeline, denial of Section 75 opportunity of hearing — rather than for merit-based challenges. The Aap and Co v UoI (Gujarat HC) and Asahi India Glass v UoI (P&H HC) lines of authority offer guidance on writ-jurisdictional questions in audit and assessment matters.

Form, statutory basis and contents

Form GST ADT-02 is the audit-closure report prescribed under Rule 101(5) of the CGST Rules and Section 65(7) of the CGST Act. Upon completion of the audit, the proper officer is required to issue ADT-02 within thirty days informing the registered person of the findings, the rights and obligations, and the reasons for such findings. ADT-02 captures the period audited, the audit observations under each verification head (turnover, ITC, refund, classification, rate, valuation), the proper officer's conclusion on each observation, the tax / interest / penalty quantum where applicable, and the rights of the registered person to dispute or accept the findings. The form is the formal closure of the audit cycle and the trigger for the next-stage decision — voluntary DRC-03 payment, SCN under Section 73 or 74, or no-action closure.

ADT-03 cost recovery

Determination of remuneration and challenges

The Commissioner determines the remuneration of the nominated Chartered Accountant or Cost Accountant under Section 66(4) based on rates broadly aligned with the ICAI and ICMAI minimum recommended scales for special-audit work. The registered person typically has no direct say in either the selection of the CA/CMA or the remuneration determination — both are administrative decisions of the Commissioner. Challenges to ADT-03 cost-recovery are rare in practice and usually focus on the underlying Section 66 nomination itself rather than the quantum. Where the Section 66 nomination was procedurally infirm (no Commissioner approval, no opportunity of being heard, no recorded reasons), the consequential ADT-03 cost-recovery similarly becomes vulnerable in writ proceedings. The OECD Forum on Tax Administration documents this cost-recovery pattern as common across jurisdictions that use specialist-audit tiers.

Payment timeline and Section 79 recovery framework

Once ADT-03 is served, the cost-recovery amount becomes payable within the timeline specified in the form (typically thirty days). Non-payment triggers Section 79 of the CGST Act — the Government dues recovery framework — which empowers the proper officer to recover the amount through modes including deduction from any amount due to the registered person, sale of any movable or immovable property, attachment of bank accounts under Section 83 provisional attachment, and recovery as land revenue arrears. The registered person can apply for instalment-payment under Section 80 read with Rule 158 where genuine financial hardship exists; the Commissioner has discretion to allow up to twenty-four monthly instalments subject to interest under Section 50.

Cost-recovery in practice — pattern from Tamil Nadu Commissionerates

In practice, ADT-03 cost-recovery determinations issued by Tamil Nadu Commissionerates have ranged from modest amounts (₹50,000-₹2 lakh for limited-scope special audits) to substantial amounts (₹10 lakh and above for multi-year complex audits involving multiple GSTINs). The pattern correlates with the audit-scope — broad valuation or ITC-eligibility audits at large multi-State entities typically yield higher cost-recovery quantums. Registered persons under Section 66 nomination are well-advised to engage with the CA/CMA on a documented scope-limitation memorandum to control the quantum; reasonableness of the determination is reviewable in writ jurisdiction though the threshold for interference is high.

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