GST officers detect Rs 7,421 cr tax evasion in April-June; recover Rs 1,920 cr

PTI, Aug 3, 2021, 5:09 PM IST

New Delhi: GST officers have detected tax evasion of Rs 7,421 crore in the April-June period of the current fiscal, Parliament was informed on Tuesday. In a written reply to the Rajya Sabha, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary gave details of the total tax evasion detected in GST in the last 3 years. In 2019-20, 10,657 cases of evasion, involving Rs 40,853.27 crore were detected. Recovery was Rs 18,464 crore. In 2020-21, Rs 49,384 crore worth GST evasion was detected in 12,596 cases.

Recovery stood at Rs 12,235 crore. In the current fiscal up to June, 1,580 cases of Goods and Services Tax evasion involving Rs 7,421.27 crore were detected, and Rs 1,920 crore recovered in April-June 2021. Chaudhary said the GST interface for the taxpayers is on a digital platform and software-based to be used for payment of tax and to comply with the requirements of law and procedure by taxpayers. “However, tax evaders are known to commit fraud even on electronic platforms by way of misrepresentation of facts like furnishing of fake credentials at the time of registration; by indulging in raising a fake invoice to avail under Input Tax Credits; misdeclaration of classification etc,” he said.

Besides, the evasion may be committed intentionally and at times non-payment of tax may happen due to human error. However, no evasion of tax has been reported due to a failure in the CBIC back-end system, Chaudhary added. The minister further said to prevent tax evasion, various validations have been built in the GSTN/CBIC system to weed out tax evaders. This includes the introduction of Aadhaar authentication for processing of new registration applications, provisions to suspend/cancel the registration of taxpayers, bulk suspension of registration by GSTN based on business intelligence, bulk cancellation of registration of taxpayers who failed to file GSTR3B returns for six or more consecutive months and blocking of ITC credit. In reply to a separate question, Chaudhary said in 2020-21 fiscal, 7,268 cases of input tax credit (ITC) fraud was detected by Central GST officers, involving an amount of Rs 31,233 crore.