ICAI notifies norms to cap individual tax audits by CAs to 60 annually

ICAI President Charanjot Singh Nanda on Wednesday said capping the number of tax audits that can be done by an individual chartered accountant to 60 annually will help strengthen the regulatory framework and enhance focus on auditing work.

The Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI), which has more than 400,000 members, has notified the norms for capping the number of individual tax audits and these will come into effect from April 1 next year.

The limit of 60 will be the aggregate limit in respect of all tax audits signed by a member (chartered accountant), both in his individual capacity and as a partner of a firm(s). Further, a partner of a firm cannot sign any tax audit report on behalf of any other partner.

There will also be certain relaxations to the limit. At a briefing in the national capital on Wednesday, Nanda said the move will strengthen the regulatory framework and help increase the focus of chartered accountants on tax audits.

The norms in this regard have been notified and are mandatory, he said, and stressed that audit is the forte of chartered accountants.

As an illustration, if there are four partners in an audit firm, each partner can also do the audit for another partner. While the audit firm can carry out up to 240 audits, a partner can do more than 60 audits individually now.

Meanwhile, amid instances of misdoings and complaints of signatures of chartered accountants being forged, ICAI has put in place the Unique Document Identification Number (UDIN) system.

UDIN is a unique number generated for every document certified or attested by a practising chartered accountant.