Notes on tax, GST and compliance
Plain-language explanations of the rules that affect taxpayers and small businesses — written and reviewed by the CA.
These notes exist because the same questions arrive over and over, and the honest answer to most of them is longer than a WhatsApp reply. Each one works through a rule as it actually applies — the section it sits under, the form it lands on, the dates that bind, and the mistake that most often triggers a notice.
Everything here is written for the person who has to file, not for other accountants. Where a threshold or a due date is stated, it is the one in force for the year named; where a position depends on facts, that is said plainly rather than smoothed over. Nothing on this page is advice on a specific situation — for that, the facts have to be looked at.
105 articles · last updated
Tax notices and assessments
What each notice actually is, how long you have to reply, and the procedural grounds worth checking before arguing the facts — from the intimation almost every filer receives to reassessment and search.
Cornerstone guide
Tax Notice on Deductions & Exemptions Claimed: What to Do
Salaried filers are receiving advisories and notices over deductions and allowances claimed in earlier returns. What the Department is actually doing, how to tell a real claim from an indefensible one, and the difference between a 50% and a 200% penalty.
Read the guideNotice Under Section 142(1): What the Officer Can Ask For
The inquiry notice that precedes assessment. What the officer is entitled to call for, the limits on that power, the special-audit direction, and why ignoring it is the worst available option.
Read the guideIncome Tax Search and Seizure: Block Assessment Rules
For searches conducted on or after 1 September 2024, assessment is under the reintroduced block assessment scheme rather than Section 153A. What changed, how a survey differs from a search, and what the safeguards are.
Read the guideSection 143(2) Scrutiny Notice: Limitation and Defences
Your return has been selected for scrutiny. Before the merits, one question decides many of these cases: was the 143(2) notice issued within limitation — because the Supreme Court has held its absence is fatal, not curable.
Read the guideHRA Claims Under Scrutiny: What Evidence Actually Holds
House rent allowance is among the most examined salary exemptions. The computation, the two thresholds that create a paper trail, and what separates a claim that survives from one that does not.
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Business tax, audit and filing
For proprietors, firms, LLPs and companies — which return applies, whether tax audit is triggered, and the deadlines that follow from that answer rather than from the form number.
Cornerstone guide
Does Your Business Need a Tax Audit for FY 2025-26?
Most businesses find out from their accountant in September. The test is four questions on figures you already have — and the two routes into audit that the turnover number alone does not reveal.
Read the guideCornerstone guide
F&O and Intraday Turnover: The Number That Triggers an Audit
A trader with ₹4 crore of contract value and ₹80,000 of profit does not have ₹4 crore of turnover. Getting this wrong is what puts people into an audit they never needed.
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Shops and Establishments Registration in Karnataka
It is the registration most new businesses in Karnataka discover late — usually when a bank, a landlord or a marketplace asks for the certificate they never obtained.
Read the guideSection 44AD or Regular Books? The 5-Year Lock-In
Section 44AD removes the need for books and audit, but coming out of it triggers a five-year bar and can force an audit. Section 44ADA carries no such lock-in. The difference is worth understanding before electing either.
Read the guideTax Audit Due Date AY 2026-27: 30 Sep and 31 Oct
For FY 2025-26 the audit report is due 30 September 2026 and the return 31 October. What decides whether audit applies, what late filing costs, and the records that hold the process up when they are missing.
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GST — registration, returns and credit
The compliance that recurs every month rather than once a year — registration thresholds and the compulsory cases, the return calendar and what being late now costs, and why input tax credit turns on GSTR-2B rather than on your invoice.
Cornerstone guide
GSTR-9 and 9C for FY 2025-26: Who Files, and by When
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GST Notices: From ASMT-10 to a Demand, and How to Reply
GST demands rarely arrive without warning. There is a sequence — automated mismatch intimation, scrutiny, pre-notice intimation, then the show-cause. Each rung has its own reply window, and answering early is far cheaper than defending late.
Read the guideCornerstone guide
Can't File an Old GST Return? The Three-Year Bar
Non-filing used to mean an accumulating late fee. It can now mean the return becomes permanently unfilable — with the liability still outstanding and no clean route to regularise it.
Read the guideRREP or REP: Which GST Rate Your Project Falls Into
Every other GST question on a project — credit, the 80% condition, the reversal at completion — assumes you already know which bucket you are in. This is that decision.
Read the guideGST Composition Scheme: When It Helps and When It Costs
The scheme is usually explained as a lower rate with less paperwork. The decision that actually matters is who your customers are — because a composition dealer selling to registered businesses is structurally more expensive than a regular one.
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Foreign income, RSUs and ESOPs
For residents holding foreign shares through an employer plan, and for non-residents with Indian assets — the disclosure and credit rules that carry the heaviest penalties for getting them wrong.
Cornerstone guide
NRI Selling Property in India: The Tax, and How to Cut It
The exemptions are not restricted to residents. What defeats them is timing — almost every one has to be set up before the sale deed, not discovered at the return.
Read the guideCornerstone guide
Form 15CA/15CB Is Now 145/146: When You Need a CA
Read the guideCornerstone guide
FAST-DS 2026: Window Open Until 31 December
The window opened on 16 August 2026 and closes on 31 December. Foreign assets you never reported settle at 60% of value against the 120% the Black Money Act charges — or a flat ₹1 lakh on narrower facts.
Read the guideForeign Assets Disclosure Scheme: Form 1 Is Now Live
Until now the scheme existed and the form did not. It is on the portal now — and the rules behind it carry a payment clock and a valuation tolerance that most summaries leave out.
Read the guideCan an NRI Use FAST-DS 2026?
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Bank finance and company compliance
Documentation lenders actually assess, and the statutory filings that follow incorporation — what banks and the Registrar expect, and what being late costs.
Cornerstone guide
CMA Data: Who Prepares It and How the Bank Reads It
Most explanations stop at what CMA data contains. The harder questions are who is allowed to prepare it, and what happens to it after it reaches the branch.
Read the guideCMA Data for a Proprietorship: What the Bank Accepts
The seven statements are the same. What differs is the evidence behind them — a proprietor has no statutory audit, often files on a presumptive basis, and the bank has to decide what to believe.
Read the guideStock Statement and Drawing Power on a CC Limit
The sanction letter says Rs 50 lakh. The bank lets you use Rs 38 lakh. The gap is drawing power — computed every month from a statement most borrowers fill in carelessly, and which can turn the account irregular without a rupee of default.
Read the guideCMA Data for a Cash Credit Renewal: What the Bank Rechecks
Read the guideAOC-4 and MGT-7: The Annual ROC Filing After Your AGM
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Internal controls, IT audit and data protection
Where accounting systems meet audit and regulation — internal financial controls reporting, IT general controls, the audit trail requirement, and readiness for the DPDP obligations.
Cornerstone guide
Setting Up a Company in India as a Non-Resident
Read the guideCornerstone guide
FC-GPR, FLA and APR: The FEMA Filings Companies Miss
Taking money from a non-resident starts a 30-day clock most founders never hear about. What each filing is, when it falls due, and why the three-year Late Submission Fee window is the line that matters.
Read the guideDPDP Rules: What Applies to Your Company, and When
The Digital Personal Data Protection Rules are notified and the clock is running. The phased dates, what full compliance actually requires, and what is worth doing in the window that remains.
Read the guideIs IFC Applicable to Your Private Company? A Decision Tree
Your auditor has asked about internal financial controls. Whether the reporting requirement actually applies turns on three alternative tests — and on one proviso that a single late ROC filing can trip.
Read the guideYour Auditor Wants User Lists and Backup Logs. Here's Why
Access, change management, development and operations — what is examined in each, why a shared admin login undermines an entire audit, and where the audit trail rule fits in.
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Service exports, GCCs and professionals
For IT, consulting and professional firms billing abroad — what makes a supply an export, the deeming provision that treated exports as local sales until it was removed, refunds on zero-rated supplies, and the transfer pricing questions a captive faces.
Cornerstone guide
Export of Services: Realisation, FIRC and the GST Refund
Zero-rating gets you the invoice out. Getting the refund, and staying inside FEMA, both turn on a document the exporter usually only thinks about afterwards.
Read the guideCornerstone guide
Form 3CEB Is Now Form 48: What a Captive Actually Files
The transfer pricing chapter has been renumbered end to end, and so have its forms. Most of what is online still carries the old numbers on both.
Read the guideCornerstone guide
GCC and Captive Unit Taxation in India
The entity has one customer, no third-party revenue and no pricing power. Almost every tax question it faces is therefore about a transaction with its own parent — which is the hardest kind to defend.
Read the guideCornerstone guide
Intermediary Services GST: Section 13(8)(b) Omitted
For nine years an Indian firm earning foreign exchange for arranging business abroad was deemed to be supplying in India. That deeming provision has been deleted — but only prospectively.
Read the guideSection 92CE Secondary Adjustment: Now Section 170
The transfer pricing adjustment is not the end of it. If the money stays abroad, it becomes a deemed loan carrying interest — and the rate the old rule points at no longer exists.
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All 14 articles on service exports, gccs and professionals →
Manufacturing and industry
For factories and industrial units — the payment rule that disallows a deduction at 31 March, credit blocked on the buildings you construct, job work, scrap, refunds when your inputs are taxed higher than your output, and distributing credit across states.
Cornerstone guide
MSME 45-Day Payment Rule: The Deduction You Lose
Every other payment in this section can be saved by paying before you file. This one cannot. If the supplier is unpaid at 31 March, the deduction moves to next year and nothing you do in between changes it.
Read the guideGST on Job Work: Challans, Time Limits and Rates
The relief is conditional on return within a fixed period. When it lapses, the supply is deemed to have happened on the date of despatch — with interest running from then, not from when you noticed.
Read the guideGST on Scrap Sales: Reverse Charge and 2% TDS
Scrap sales used to be the least interesting line in a manufacturer's return. Two changes turned the buyer into a deductor and, in some cases, into the person paying the tax.
Read the guideInverted Duty Structure Refund: What You Can Claim
The formula is the whole subject. It excludes input services, it apportions by turnover, and it leaves a residue that no amount of correct filing will recover.
Read the guideITC on Factory Construction: Where 17(5) Blocks It
For a few months, a building used for a taxable business could qualify as plant and carry credit. Then the wording was changed retrospectively to a date seven years earlier.
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Real estate, JDAs and development
For landowners and developers — where the income tax and GST treatments of a joint development agreement diverge, what crystallises at the completion certificate, and the positions worth fixing before an agreement is signed rather than after.
Cornerstone guide
JDA Taxation: Income Tax and GST on Joint Development
The landowner's adviser sees capital gains. The developer's adviser sees GST. Neither sees the whole transaction — which is why JDA disputes usually start with something both sides thought the other had handled.
Read the guideGST on Advances From Flat Buyers: When It Falls Due
A developer's GST is not paid when the flat is handed over. It is paid instalment by instalment, from the booking amount onward — and a cancellation two years later has a window inside which it can be reversed, and a route outside it.
Read the guideCompany or LLP Landowner in a JDA: No Deferral
The pillar says it in one line — no deferral. For a corporate landowner that line is the whole problem: a gain measured on property not yet built, in a year with no cash, and a stock-in-trade question underneath it.
Read the guideGST on TDR and FSI: Reverse Charge, Exemption, Timing
The 80:20 post excludes TDR and FSI from the procurement test because they carry their own reverse charge. This is that charge — the exemption that shrinks it, the cap on it, and the date it falls due.
Read the guideJDA Agreement Review: The Twelve Clauses That Decide the Tax
The pillar says every outcome is negotiable before execution and fixed after it. This is the clause-by-clause version of that sentence — what each provision does to the tax, and the wording that goes wrong.
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The Income-tax Act 2025 transition
The 1961 Act still governs the return you are filing now; the 2025 Act takes over from tax year 2026-27. What changes, which section numbers map to which, and when each applies.
Cornerstone guide
Capital Gains Under the Income-tax Act 2025: New Sections
Section 45 becomes 67, Section 54 becomes 82, and the rollover exemptions now sit at 82–89. Rates and holding periods are unchanged — but buyback taxation is not.
Read the guideCornerstone guide
Income Tax Notices Under the New Act: Section Numbers
An old section number on a notice for a past year is correct, not a defect — and a fresh 1961-Act notice can still issue today. Here is how to tell which track your notice is on.
Read the guideCornerstone guide
NRI Taxation Under the Income-tax Act 2025
Residency still decides everything, and Section 6 keeps its number. What moved is the NRI chapter, DTAA relief and the withholding rules — plus one property trap that catches nearly every buyer.
Read the guideCornerstone guide
Old vs New Tax Regime Under the Income-tax Act 2025
Section 202 is the default and Section 156 gives a ₹60,000 rebate up to ₹12 lakh. The old regime survives as an opt-out — and for a narrow band of taxpayers it still wins.
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Section 80C Is Now Section 123: Deduction Mapping Guide
The complete Chapter VI-A old-to-new table — same deductions, same limits, new section numbers. Plus the point most mappings skip: under the default regime, most of them are not available at all.
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More articles on the Income-tax Act 2025 transition are being prepared and will appear here as they are reviewed and published.