In a Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) issued by Institute of Chartered Accountants of India ( ICAI ) Unique Document Identification Number (UDIN) said that, Chartered Accountants ( CA ) are not authorised to certify Income Tax Return (ITR) as True copy.

UDIN is an important step in ushering transparency and combat malpractices in the industry. The regulators, banks and other third part stakeholders having UDIN number, on a single click, can verify the credentials of Chartered Accountant and can authenticate that the documents issued by a CA only.

The ICAI has answered questions on Registrations, Stakeholders/Third Party Verification, Certificates/Attestation Functions, GST and Tax Audit, Audit and Assurance Functions, Revocation/Cancellation of UDIN, etc…

Key issues Addressed by ICAI in FAQ

Registration is not required for regulatory/third party for verification. For verifying the UDIN regulator/third party has to mention UDIN number, Mobile number, email ID and Name of the authorities searching UDIN.

UDIN is not required for certified true copies.

UDIN will be applicable both for manually as well as digitally signed Certificates / uploaded online such as Form 15 CB, MCA Forms etc. In case of digitally signed / online certificates, UDIN has to be generated and communicated to “Management” or “Those Charged with Governance” for disseminating it to the stakeholders from their end.

UDIN will be applicable. In the case where there is no field for mentioning UDIN on digitally signed online reports, UDIN has to be generated and communicated to “Management” or “Those Charged with Governance” for disseminating it to the stakeholders from their end.

One UDIN per assignment signature affixed at a time is required. In other words, in case where reports/certificates/ documents of an assignment are signed and submitted periodically or at different point of time such as Concurrent Audits/ Limited Review / Quarterly Review Reports etc. separate UDINs are to be generated.

UDIN once generated cannot be edited. However, a preview option is available before Generation for verifying the details as entered for generating UDIN for its correctness.

There is no limit on the generation of UDIN and there is no restriction on the number of UDIN to be generated.

UDIN shall be mentioned after the Signature and Membership Number of the Member on the Report/ Certificate.

In the case of joints audits, all the signing Auditors have to obtain UDIN separately and mention their UDINs individually on the reports signed by them. Auditors may use the same or different keywords/figures while generating such UDINs.

It is mandatory to generate UDIN while signing the Audit Reports / Certificates / Document. However, if any member is unable to generate UDIN as desired above, it has to generate within 15 days / 30 days (refer the Annexure 6 of this booklet) of signing the same. The UDIN so generated has be communicated to “Management” or “Those Charged with Governance” for disseminating it to the stakeholders from their end.

For the certification of ITR, Members are not authorized to certify ITR as a true copy. However, they can make an opinion/ certificate/ report about ITR based on its source, location and authenticity of data from which ITR is being prepared and UDIN is required while doing so.