Auditing the Audit - Results are not all that Encouraging
HAVE you ever seen the audit report of C & AG on indirect taxes? The first chapter normally contains various data tables and colourful charts analysing the data over the last several years to rate the performance of the revenue departments. The Audit Report 2010 contained the data of the audit objections raised by the C & AG auditors and the amount of revenue detected from the year 2004-05 onwards. So we tried to do similar analysis in respect of the C & AG performance over the years.
During the last five years, the performance of the audit was as under:
# Source: Para 1.9.1 - of Report No. 12 of 2009-10 - Union Government (Indirect Taxes - Central Excise)
Thus, when compared to the year 2004-05, during 2008-09, the number of paras raised by the Audit has decreased by 66% and the revenue detected has decreased by 980%! Does this mean the Audit is not performing or the compliance levels have gone up?