A notice has arrived from the GST department with ASMT-10 printed on it, and the language is doing the thing that GST language does — it is formal, it cites provisions you have never read, and it does not say plainly what will happen to you. The amount involved is probably not large. The wording is what is frightening.
Here is the short version: this is a question, not a demand. Someone has scrutinised your return, found a figure that does not reconcile, and is asking you to explain it. If your explanation holds, the matter ends and the officer records that it ended. Almost everything that goes wrong from here goes wrong for one of two reasons — the deadline passes, or the reply is filed on the wrong form.
What ASMT-10 is
ASMT-10 is the “Notice for intimating discrepancies in the return after scrutiny”. It is issued under CGST Act s.61 read with CGST Rule 99: the proper officer scrutinises a return, and where a discrepancy is found, issues this notice informing you of it and seeking your explanation.
The reply window is not exceeding thirty days from service of the notice, as specified in the notice itself. Two details in that sentence matter more than they look. It runs from service of the notice — not from when you opened the portal and saw it. And it is a ceiling, not a default: the notice states its own date, and that date can be shorter.
Nothing has been decided against you yet. That is the whole reason a good reply is worth writing.
What triggers an ASMT-10 for a services business
Scrutiny compares your returns against each other and against what other people have filed about you. For an independent services professional, the discrepancies that surface are usually one of these — and the first three are timing artefacts rather than tax owed:
- An invoice recorded in a different tax period. You raised it in one month and reported it in the next, so the outward supplies in one return do not line up with the other.
- A credit note issued after the original invoice was reported. The original figure and the net figure are both correct, in different returns, and their difference is the discrepancy.
- An export of services made under LUT. Zero-rated supply reported in a way that does not obviously reconcile with the tax actually paid — common for anyone invoicing foreign clients. If that is you, the LUT mechanics are worth reading properly.
- A counterparty's error. A client reported your invoice wrongly, or reported one you never raised. Your return is right and theirs is not.
- An amendment you already filed. The discrepancy predates your correction and the correction has not been read alongside it.
Notice what is not on that list: fraud, evasion, or anything requiring a professional to defend you. The overwhelming majority of these notices are arithmetic disagreements with a paper trail sitting in your own records.
How the reply works
The rule gives you two routes, and choosing between them is the only real decision on this page:
- Accept and pay. If the discrepancy is real, you may accept it, pay the tax, interest and any other amount due, and inform the officer on ASMT-11. Correct when the mismatch reflects tax you genuinely owe.
- Explain. Furnish your explanation on ASMT-11. Correct when the mismatch is a timing artefact, a counterparty error, or something you have already amended — which, per the list above, is most of the time.
A reply that works does three things: it names the specific entries in dispute rather than answering in general terms, it states which of the situations above applies to each, and it points at the record that proves it. A reply that fails is one that argues about fairness instead of reconciling figures.
It is filed at the notices and orders area of the GST portal, against the ASMT-10 that was issued. That is a destination rather than a click-path, and deliberately so — portal navigation changes, and a page that confidently walks you through menus that have since moved is worse than one that tells you where you are going. Correct as of August 2026.
Answering the next oneMost of these notices are answered from your own invoice history. HourSlip keeps every invoice, credit note and export under LUT as it happens, so reconciling a scrutiny notice is a lookup rather than a reconstruction.What happens if you do nothing
The honest answer is that the notice itself tells you, and it is the part worth reading twice. Scrutiny is the stage before anything is determined against you; letting the window close does not make the question go away, it removes your opportunity to answer it cheaply. The cost of a reply is an afternoon. The cost of not replying is that the next document you receive is not a question.
We are not going to tell you exactly which provision follows, or quote a penalty figure at you, because the route depends on what the officer concludes and we will not print a number we have not verified against the Act. Read the consequence stated on your own notice — it is specific to your case in a way that no article can be.
What to do this week
- Find the reply date on the notice. Do not assume thirty days.
- Pull the entries the notice names, and match each one against your own invoice record.
- Decide, per entry, which of the five situations above it is — or whether it is genuinely tax owed.
- File on ASMT-11, entry by entry, with the reason for each.
If your records cannot answer step 2 quickly, that is the real finding, and it is worth fixing before the next return rather than the next notice.