Chartered Accountant’s beware before issuing any certificate or you might get blacklisted by ministry

Under various laws certification of a Chartered Accountant is required which includes certifying financials, net worth or inventory etc. for bank loan or issuing certificate under various other laws.

Chartered Accountants have been provided responsibility under various laws to inspect various aspects and the documents certified by Chartered Accountants are considered as true and fair and various decisions are taken based on the report issued and certified by Chartered Accountants.

Earlier people used to also portray themselves as Chartered Accountants and certify various documents and thus fooling the authorities and were also damaging the image of Chartered Accountants.

To overcome the same ICAI had introduced the concept of UDIN wherein any document certified by a Chartered Accountant needs to have a UDIN number and only after a document has been issued with UDIN number same shall be considered as certified by a Chartered Accountant.

Thus, UDIN was a great power which was awarded to the Chartered Accountant’s but as it said “with great powers comes great responsibility”. This is the same case where although CA’s have been give great powers but this also increases their responsibility while issuing any certificate.

Recently an order of Ministry of Food processing industries is being circulated wherein the ministry has blacklisted/ debarred a Chartered Accountant and has ordered that no certificate issued by him shall be accepted by the ministry.

It is being speculated that this blacklisting is being done because of issuing some incorrect certificate.

Hence, all the Chartered Accountants are being asked to be cautious before issuing any certificate of turnover, net worth or utilisation and to check all the supporting documents thoroughly or else the ministry can blacklist the professional is the certificate is found incorrect.

Further, under Income tax act as per Section 271J there is a penalty of Rs. 10,000 if the AO, CIT(A) during any proceedings finds that a Chartered Accountant has furnished incorrect information in any certificate issued by him.

Thus, all the professionals needs to be cautious and issue certificate only after proper checking of all the information.

To download the full order CLICK HERE.