Business News Desk – Tax officials are running a nationwide campaign against fake companies that are defrauding the government treasury. About 10,700 companies have been detected, which have defrauded the government treasury of Rs 10,179 crore. Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) member Shashank Priya gave this information on Tuesday. Speaking at an ASSOCHAM event, Shashank Priya also said that in future tax officials may also impose some restrictions on new taxpayers based on their risk profile.
He said, “We are very saddened by the misuse of the system. We have to use all means to ensure that tax evaders are stopped. We may also put a restriction on how many invoices a company can issue in a month.” The CBIC official also said that the government is taking strict action to check fake GST registrations and more physical verifications are being done.
The second all-India drive against fake registrations began on August 16 and will continue till October 15. He said tax officials have identified 67,970 GSTINs. Of these, 59 per cent GSTINs or 39,965 have been verified till September 22. “27 per cent have been found to be non-existent. This percentage is almost the same as compared to the previous drive. We have detected tax evasion of Rs 10,179 crore. Input tax credit (ITC) of Rs 2,994 crore has been blocked,” said Shashank Priya.
Also, Rs 28 crore has been recovered (in the second drive till September 22).” In the first drive against fake registrations between May 16, 2023 and July 15, 2023, a total of 21,791 entities with GST registration were found to be non-existent. Suspected tax evasion of Rs 24,010 crore was detected during the first special drive last year. He said the GST system has a problem of data mismatch, which led to over one lakh show-cause notices being issued by tax officials last fiscal.
