Change in Filling Form 23B : An Overview

Every statutory auditor appointed by the company in the Annual General Meeting under section 224(1) of the Companies Act, 1956 in form 23B has to intimate whether he has accepted the appointment or not to the concerned Registrar of Companies, within 30 days of the intimation received from the company by the auditor.

Till date the form is uploaded free of cost and in lots of cases the auditors does not bother to file the form and intimate the concern ROC even it is free of cost procedure. While filling of Form 23AC where there is space for SRN of Form 23B, they used the SRN Z99999999 or any other SRN that does not exist.

The MCA has issued general circular no 14/2012 dated 21/06/2012 to impose certain fees on filling of form 23B. The Ministry of corporate affairs has decided to charge the auditors on such intimation and impose the penalty in case of delay in filling the Form 23B. Even on the other side, they have made compulsory to mention the Service Request Number i.e. SRN of Form no 23B in Form 23AC so that they can assure the filling of intimation from auditors otherwise the company cannot upload its form for Balance sheet.

Now as per my understanding and thinking of the consequence, I feel that while prescrutiny of the EForm 23AC the SRN of Form 23B will checked and if an invalid SRN is found the system will though a error and form cannot be final. Even that can also be possible the error will though at the time of uploading the form in MCA portal. Another possibility is also that the form will be accepted and later marked for user clarification on account of invalid SRN of 23B. these can be possibilities of type of problem you can face, but one thing is sure you will definitely face the problem if you are not filling correct form 23B.

Now we will move on to schedule X i.e. details of fees for filling of form. The filling fees will be as under:-

In case of delay the additional fees will be as under:-

The Maximum amount of fees payable will be 10 times of normal fees.

Thanks & Regards

CA Prashant Gupta

prgupta.ca@gmail.com