ASI/ASISSE Return Filing Services in India

Expert Consultants for Companies, LLPs & Industrial Establishments — MoSPI / NSO Compliance

You opened this page because you received a notice. Maybe it landed in your inbox a week ago. Maybe your accounts team flagged it this morning. Either way, the first reaction for most businesses is the same — "Is this real, or is someone trying to scam us?"

It's real. Completely.

Since April 2026, the National Statistical Office has been sending out notices to thousands of factories, private limited companies, LLPs, and public sector units across India — asking them to log into a government portal and submit detailed financial and operational data for FY 2024–25. These notices come from MoSPI (Ministry of Statistics and Programme Implementation), and they carry the force of the Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 behind them.

Non-compliance isn't a slap on the wrist. For companies, penalties start at Rupees 5,000 — and then add another Rupees 5,000 for every single day you continue to default. That clock starts ticking 14 days after the initial notice.

ASC Group has been helping companies, LLPs, and industrial establishments respond to these notices — correctly, completely, and on time. If you've just received one and don't know where to start, read on.

ASI and ASISSE — What's the Difference?

Two separate surveys. Two different sets of businesses. One shared legal framework.

ASI (Annual Survey of Industries) isn't new — it's been running since 1959. It targets the registered manufacturing sector: factories under the Factories Act, 1948, bidi and cigar establishments, electricity undertakings, and industrial units broadly. For over six decades, ASI data has fed directly into India's national accounts — GDP, GVA, employment statistics. If you run a factory and you've been filing under the Factories Act, there's a reasonable chance your establishment has been part of an ASI sample before, even if your finance team never dealt with it directly.

ASISSE (Annual Survey of Incorporated Services Sector Enterprises) is a different story. It launched in April 2026 — the first time India has ever attempted a structured, annual survey of the formal services sector. It covers Private Limited Companies, Public Limited Companies, LLPs, and PSUs operating in services: IT and ITES, trade, transport, hospitality, education, healthcare, finance, insurance, real estate, and professional services. Proprietorships and partnerships don't fall under it. But if you're a company or LLP in any of those service sectors and NSO has selected your GSTIN — you're in.

Both surveys run under the Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 (as amended in 2017) and the Jan Vishwas (Amendment of Provisions) Act, 2023. Sampling happens at the GSTIN level using the GSTN database as the sampling frame, with NIC 2025 for activity classification and CPC 3.0 for product and service coding.

One more thing — and this trips up a lot of clients when they first call us. These surveys have absolutely nothing to do with your Income Tax or GST assessments. The Act itself legally bars NSO from sharing your submitted data with the Income Tax Department, GST authorities, SEBI, or RBI for any enforcement use. The data goes into computing economic indicators. That's all it does.

Does Your Business Actually Need to File?

Short answer: only if you've received a notice.

NSO selects enterprises through a sampling process. If your business hasn't been selected and no notice has arrived, you have no obligation for this round. But if a notice has come — complete with portal login credentials and a filing deadline — that obligation is legally binding.

A few things to know about how the selection works:

 The selection unit is the State-level GSTIN, not the company entity as a whole. So if your business operates across five states and has five separate GSTINs registered, it's entirely possible that two of those GSTINs get selected while three don't. Each selected GSTIN must be filed as a separate return. You cannot club data across GSTINs, and you cannot submit consolidated company-wide figures in place of GSTIN-specific data. The portal validates at the individual GSTIN level — it will catch the discrepancy.

 For ASISSE's first round, approximately 1,21,350 enterprises have been selected nationally. If you're reading this after receiving a notice, your business is one of them.

What Happens If You Ignore the Notice?

The Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 is clear on this. Here's the penalty structure:

Default Stage	Penalty
Failure or refusal to furnish information	Up to Rupees 5,000 (companies) / Rupees 1,000 (individuals)
Non-compliance continuing beyond 14 days	Up to Rupees 5,000 per day (companies) / Rupees 1,000 per day (individuals)
Wilful submission of false information	Imprisonment up to 6 months and/or fine
Recovery mechanism	As arrears of land revenue under Section 15C

The part that catches most people off guard: paying the penalty doesn't mean you don't have to file anymore. The return is still mandatory — the penalty is on top of, not instead of, the filing requirement.

 Beyond the money, there's a practical issue too. Businesses that miss deadlines or submit inconsistent data often end up on NSO's radar for field verification visits in subsequent years. That means an official showing up to cross-check your records in person. It's avoidable.

How ASC Group Handles the Filing

The questionnaire isn't hard to understand in isolation. But preparing accurate responses to each data block — while reconciling them against your GST returns, audited financials, payroll records, and asset schedules — takes more time and expertise than most finance teams can spare in the middle of their regular workload.

 Here's what our process looks like:

 Notice Check First
Before anything else, we verify the notice is legitimate, confirm the GSTIN(s) selected, check the reference period, and map out your exact filing obligation. Occasionally there are errors — wrong GSTIN, wrong reference period — and catching those early saves a lot of trouble.

 Block-by-Block Data Preparation
The survey questionnaire is divided into data blocks. For ASISSE and ASI, the key ones include:

 Block 1 — Enterprise identity, ownership type, and activity classification

• Block 3 — Fixed assets, capital work-in-progress, and investments
• Block 4 — Working capital, borrowings, and loan positions
• Block 5 — Employment data broken down by male, female, and transgender headcount, plus total labour costs
• Blocks 6A & 6B — Intermediate consumption items, coded using CPC 3.0
• Block 7A — Receipts, output, and revenue data
• Blocks 11 & 12 — Digital technology usage and IT infrastructure

Each block gets mapped directly to your audited financials. Nothing gets entered into the portal that we haven't traced back to a source document.

Reconciliation Before Submission
This is the step that separates a clean filing from one that generates NSO queries. We reconcile your GST turnover, P&L, balance sheet, payroll register, and fixed asset schedule with each other — and then with the portal's expected data format. Any mismatch shows up here, before submission, not after.

GSTIN-Level Apportionment for Multi-State Businesses
If your company runs consolidated books covering multiple states, we break down the data to extract figures for each specific GSTIN. It requires careful apportionment — turnover, employees, assets — but it's essential for accuracy.

Portal Filing and Validation
We handle the actual submission through the official MoSPI secure portal, including running the portal's own validation checks, reviewing auto-aggregated data under Block 9, and confirming submission within your deadline.

Post-Filing Support
If NSO field officers follow up with queries or request access to supporting records, we assist throughout. For recurring clients, we also set up an annual compliance calendar so the next round doesn't catch anyone off guard.

What Documents You'll Need

Getting these organised before we start speeds up the process considerably:

• Audited Balance Sheet and P&L for FY 2024–25
• Trial balance
• GST returns and GSTIN-wise turnover breakdowns
• Payroll register — including headcount split by gender
• Fixed asset schedule with depreciation
• Working capital and loan statements
• Production records and raw material consumption data (for ASI filers)
• Electricity and fuel cost data
• Factory licence (ASI filers)
• NIC 2025 classification of your main business activity

 If some of these aren't immediately available — incomplete audit, delayed year-end close — we can work around it, but the earlier we start, the better.

Why Clients Choose ASC Group for This

Honestly, a big part of it is that most businesses have never dealt with an NSO/MoSPI filing before. When an unfamiliar notice arrives and the deadline is three weeks away, the instinct is to find someone who already knows the process.

ASC Group brings together Chartered Accountants, Company Secretaries, and statutory compliance professionals who have worked with MoSPI/NSO procedures, GST reconciliation at scale, and the specific data requirements of ASI and ASISSE. We have clients across manufacturing, IT/ITES, logistics, retail, pharmaceuticals, construction, and financial services — and across all states and union territories.

 What our clients value most isn't just the technical capability. It's that when they hand this over to us, they don't have to think about it again until we come back to them with the completed filing for review.

Industries We Support

• Manufacturing and industrial units (factories, process industries, engineering)
• IT and ITES companies
• Logistics and warehousing
• Retail and e-commerce businesses
• Pharmaceuticals and healthcare
• Construction and infrastructure (incorporated entities)
• Professional and financial services
• Hospitality and tourism
• Educational institutions
• MSMEs through to large corporates

Frequently Asked Questions

The notice mentions a portal login and says it's from NSO. Could this be a scam?

No. ASISSE was officially launched via a PIB Press Release dated 6 April 2026 (Release ID: 2249336). If you want to verify independently: check that the portal URL is on the mospi.gov.in domain, and cross-check the Field Office name and contact mentioned in your notice against NSO's published directory. Both should match up exactly.

My finance team is worried this is related to GST or Income Tax scrutiny. Is it?

It isn't — and the protection here is statutory, not just administrative policy. The Collection of Statistics Act, 2008 legally prohibits NSO from sharing any data you submit with the Income Tax Department, GST authorities, SEBI, RBI, or any other regulatory body for enforcement use. What you submit stays within the statistical system.

We haven't received any notice. Do we still need to file?

No. Filing is mandatory only for enterprises that NSO has specifically selected and notified. No notice, no obligation — at least for this round.

What realistically happens if we just ignore the notice?

For companies, the penalty begins at up to Rupees 5,000. After 14 days of continued non-compliance, that becomes up to Rupees 5,000 per day. Wilfully submitting false information carries a risk of imprisonment up to 6 months. And — this is the part most people miss — paying the penalty still doesn't remove the obligation to file. You'll be penalised and still required to submit.

We have GSTINs registered in four different states. Do we file for all of them?

 Only for the GSTINs for which you've received a notice. If NSO has selected multiple GSTINs separately, each one gets its own independent return. Don't merge or consolidate data across GSTINs — the portal is built to catch that.

Can ASC Group handle the full process?

Yes — from notice verification through to final portal submission and any post-submission queries from NSO field offices. You hand us the source documents, we take it from there.

Do you cover clients across all of India?

Yes. We support businesses across all states and union territories.

Don't Let the Deadline Slip

Penalties under the Collection of Statistics Act don't wait, and the filing itself requires careful financial reconciliation — not the kind of work you want to rush through the night before a deadline.

If your company or LLP has received an ASI or ASISSE notice from MoSPI or NSO, get in touch now. Our team will verify your notice, outline what's needed, and manage the entire process so your return is filed accurately and on time.

Reach out to ASC Group for professional ASI/ASISSE Return Filing Services across India.