What do you think of Audit? CE Commissionerate Feedback Form

By Vijay Kumar

WHAT do you think of the Central Excise and Service Tax Auditors who visit you? (As per the Delhi High Court order, they are not supposed to visit you - but they continue to do so)

The Service Tax Audit Manual requires the Commissioner to interact with the major taxpayers in order to obtain feedback on the audit system and the Central Excise Audit Manual stipulates that the Audit Cell should discreetly gather views from the trade/industry regarding the system of audit. Standard feedback format should be designed by the cell for this purpose. The conclusions of the cell should be an input for taking responsive measures. This cell should prepare a comprehensive report highlighting the areas needing training and quality improvement.

Have you ever heard about any Commissioner interacting with the taxpayers to obtain feedback on the Audit System?

Have you ever heard about any feedback form being given to the assessees to get their feedback on the Audit's work?

DDT is happy to report a positive action by the Commissioner of Central Excise, Hyderabad III who has designed a feedback form which is sent to the Assessees along with the Final Audit Report. The feedback is to be sent to the DC directly without interference from the auditors. The Commissioner himself reads the feedback and he says that the feedback has been extremely useful in improving Audit.

The Feedback form of the Commissionerates is given below: Why don't other Commissioners follow suit?

Sl. No.	Particulars	Feedback
1	Did the audit team give 15 days advance notice regarding the audit date?	Yes			No				No. of days of notice given
1
2	During the Pre-audit, did the audit team explain the objectives, timing and audit process and solicited your questions and concerns?	Yes to all	No to all				Yes to some extent					Left over aspects
2
3	Did the audit team bear their Identity Cards during the audit of unit?	Yes all	Only a few							None of them
3
4	Did the audit team has fair understanding of your operation sand accounting system?	Good	Reasonable							Little Understanding
4
5	Were they professional, courteous and constructive in their approach?	Yes				No
5
6	Did the Audit Team discuss the out come of the audit with your staff?	Yes	To some extent							Not at all
6
7	Did the audit team made any significant observations in your internal control, accounting system and tax compliance to help you in improving tax compliance of your organisation?	Excellent observations	Very good observations					Good observations			No significant observations
7
8	Did the Final Audit Report contain the same points which were discussed during audit by the Audit Team?	All points		A few points					None
8
9	Your experience with audit process and auditors (Please rate on the scale of 1 to 5, 1 being not good and 5 for excellent)
10	Additional comments, if any, on the above points

This is an ISO certified Commissionerate - the form can be seen at http://cxhyd3.nic.in/Documentfiles/Auditfeedbackform.pdf