August 29, 2019
Set up task force to detect & take action against tax evasion: Dr Amit Mitra to Union Fin MIn
Flagging concerns regarding many instances of frauds under the Goods and Services Tax (GST) regime, Bangla Finance Minister Dr Amit Mitra has written a letter to the Union Finance Minister asking for the setting up of task force having both State and Central officers to detect all cases of tax evasion and take action against racketeers for recovery of evaded tax.
The letter, dated Tuesday, says that Union Government data presented in the Rajya Sabha last month showed that 9,385 cases of tax fraud involving an amount of Rs 45,682.83 crore has been detected by authorities under the GST regime since its rollout on July 1, 2017.
Even this amount, stated Dr Mitra, is “understated” since it does not include complete data of frauds under SGST, which, if compiled for all States, may show tax evasion of over Rs 1 lakh crore.
In view of this huge loss of tax revenue, the State Finance Minister has requested for the topic of GST fraud and its impact on overall GST collections to be discussed in-depth in the upcoming GST Council meeting.
Dr Mitra has also asked for the compilation of a list of all cancelled GSTINs with PAN, email addresses and other details, to be shared with all officers so that the same fraud is not investigated by multiple agencies.
Another aspect of GST mentioned in the letter is that the new return system with invoice matching needed to be put in place in October (for large taxpayers) and in January (for all taxpayers) “without fail”.
It needs to be mentioned here that the issue of tax evasion had also been broached by Dr Mitra in his letter to the Union Finance Minister on July 1. Among other issues, he had stated that “for want of inbuilt system-based matching, hawala billing and fake trade has grown in leaps and bounds and the realization of tax has suffered.”
Source: The India Express
