Import Export Compliance Consultant India

Marg Tax Advisors LLP is an import export compliance consultant in India that businesses turn to when they want their cross-border trade function reviewed before a department does it for them, whether that means a periodic compliance audit, a recordkeeping check, or building the internal controls that make the next audit find less to fix.

Import-export compliance in India actually runs across three separate statutes at once: the Customs Act, 1962 at the point of import or export, the Foreign Trade (Development and Regulation) Act, 1992 administered by DGFT for licences and schemes, and the Foreign Exchange Management Act, 1999 for the payment and remittance side of the same transactions. Most businesses have a filing consultant for each of those three separately, but rarely a single review that checks whether the three are actually consistent with each other, which is exactly where gaps tend to sit undetected until an audit or investigation surfaces them.

What Our Import Export Compliance Consultant India Team Handles

• Periodic compliance audits across customs, DGFT and FEMA touchpoints for a business's import-export function.
• Recordkeeping and documentation retention review against what each of the three statutes actually requires.
• Restricted party, denied entity and sanctioned goods screening built into a business's onboarding process for new counterparties.
• Internal compliance manual and standard operating procedure development for IEC usage, authorised signatories and recordkeeping.
• Pre-audit readiness reviews before a department-initiated audit, verification or investigation.
• Coordination with our scheme-specific and dispute-specific teams once an audit identifies an issue that needs more than a corrective note.

The Three-Statute Compliance Framework

A compliance review that only looks at one of these three statutes routinely misses issues sitting at the boundary between them, which is where genuine exposure tends to concentrate.

A duty exemption claimed under a customs notification can depend on conditions set in a DGFT authorisation, and a DGFT authorisation's export obligation can depend on export proceeds actually being realised under FEMA within the applicable timeline. Marg Tax Advisors reviews all three together rather than treating them as three unrelated filing streams.

How a Compliance Audit Actually Runs

A useful compliance audit follows a defined sequence rather than a general document request.

1. Scope mappingIdentifying which licences, authorisations, exemptions and FEMA reporting obligations actually apply to the business, rather than auditing against a generic checklist.
2. Document and transaction testingSampling actual shipping bills, bills of entry, authorisations, consumption records and remittance data against what was declared or claimed.
3. Gap identificationFlagging mismatches, whether that is an unrealised export proceed, a consumption register that does not reconcile, or a valuation position that would not survive scrutiny.
4. Corrective roadmapSetting out what needs to be fixed, in what order, and which items are urgent enough to address before, rather than after, the next filing or renewal.
5. Follow-upConfirming the corrective steps were actually completed, rather than leaving the roadmap as a one-time deliverable that is never revisited.

Recordkeeping and Documentation Retention

Each of the three statutes carries its own recordkeeping expectations, covering shipping bills, bills of entry, authorisations, consumption registers, bank realisation certificates and correspondence with the department. Retention periods differ by document type and by which statute the record supports, so Marg Tax Advisors reviews a business's actual retention practice against what each set of records needs to survive, rather than applying one blanket retention rule across every document a trade function generates.

Restricted Party and Sanctioned Goods Screening

Onboarding a new overseas counterparty without checking it against the restricted and denied party lists that apply to Indian trade, or shipping an item that falls within SCOMET without the classification being checked first, are the kind of gaps a compliance audit is built to catch before a transaction happens rather than after. Marg Tax Advisors builds a screening step into a client's onboarding process for new counterparties and products, rather than treating screening as a one-off exercise done only when a deal already looks unusual.

Building an Internal Compliance Manual

A compliance audit that ends with a one-time corrective list tends to find the same gaps again at the next review. Marg Tax Advisors builds the audit findings into an internal compliance manual covering IEC usage, who is authorised to sign and file on the business's behalf, the recordkeeping practices each document type needs, and the restricted party screening step built into onboarding, so the next audit is checking whether the manual is being followed rather than starting from a blank page.

When a Compliance Gap Needs More Than an Audit

Some findings are corrected internally; others need scheme-specific or dispute-specific work once identified. This page is the starting point that identifies which of those a business actually needs, rather than assuming every gap requires the same response.

Who You'll Work With

SSG

Shashank Shekhar Gupta

Founder, Chartered Accountant and Lawyer

Import-export compliance work at Marg Tax Advisors is led by Shashank Shekhar Gupta, founder of the firm, a Chartered Accountant and a lawyer who chairs the International Trade Law Committee of the Indian Industries Association.