A man in Bhiwandi, Thane, has been charged with misusing the identity documents of a senior citizen and his family to operate five firms and evade Goods and Services Tax (GST) payments.
The GST intelligence unit detected tax evasion of more than Rs 1.98 lakh crore last year and arrested 140 masterminds who were involved in defrauding the exchequer, the finance ministry said on Thursday. In 2023, the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI) detected significant GST evasion in diverse sectors like online gaming, casinos, insurance and secondment (import of manpower services). "DGGI has achieved an increase in detection of cases of evasion and voluntary payments. In 2023, DGGI detected 6,323 cases involving evasion of duty of Rs 1,98,324 crore with a voluntary payment of Rs 28,362 crore.
India's second largest IT services company Infosys has been slapped with a 'pre-show cause' notice for alleged GST evasion to the tune of about Rs 32,403 crore. In a BSE filing, the Bengaluru headquartered IT firm said Karnataka State GST authorities have issued a pre-show cause notice for payment of GST of Rs 32,403 crores for the period July 2017 to March 2022, towards the expenses incurred by overseas branch offices of Infosys Ltd, and added that the company has responded to the pre-show cause notice.
Kanpur police have uncovered a GST fraud racket where suspects used unsuspecting individuals' documents to create fake firms and route transactions worth nearly Rs 250 crore.
Income tax officials on Monday conducted surveys at offices of engineering major Larsen & Toubro and media firm Zee Group for alleged GST evasion, an official of the tax department said. When contacted, L&T neither confirmed nor denied the development, while the media group has confirmed the tax survey. The tax official said surveys have been carried out at many L&T premises in the city, and in case of Zee, the surveys are underway at all its offices across the country since morning.
'There are unscrupulous traders who create fake invoices by showing bogus e-way bills, movement of goods.' 'Since the entities registered across different states, and kept on changing their numbers, tracing them was difficult.'
GST officers can now launch prosecution against offenders in cases where the amount of evasion or misuse of input tax credit is more than Rs 5 crore, the finance ministry has said. However, this monetary threshold will not be applicable in the case of habitual evaders or in cases where arrests have been made at the time of investigation. "One of the important considerations for deciding whether prosecution should be launched is the availability of adequate evidence," the GST investigation wing under the finance ministry said, while issuing instructions for launching prosecution.
Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs said despite the electronic way or E-way bill mechanism there has been rampant evasion and there is a need to increase compliance.
'This is not a case of tax evasion but the result of long-standing ambiguities in GST rules and unawareness.'
Kanpur Police solved a robbery case leading to the discovery of a large hawala network. Six people were arrested, and investigations are ongoing to uncover the full extent of the illegal financial activities.
A shift appears underway in India's tax landscape. States with relatively smaller tax collections like Odisha and Telangana are emerging as the fastest-growing contributors to indirect and direct tax collections, respectively.
Nearly 96 per cent of new applicants will benefit from this simplified approval route.
Festive buying spree unleashed by lower tax rates pushed gross GST collection to about Rs 1.96 lakh crore in October, registering a 4.6 per cent year-on-year growth -- the slowest rate so far this fiscal.
After issuing notices to hotels across the country for allegedly underpaying goods and services tax (GST) on restaurant services, the revenue department has now widened its scrutiny by seeking information from online travel platforms.
GST authorities have detected GST fraud of Rs 55,575 crore over the last two years and arrested over 700 persons for causing loss to the exchequer, an official said on Thursday. Over 22,300 fake GST identification numbers (GSTIN) were detected by the officers of the Directorate General of GST Intelligence (DGGI). The government on November 9, 2020, launched a nationwide special drive against unscrupulous entities for availing and passing on Input Tax Credit (ITC) fraudulently by issuing fake/bogus invoices, thereby evading Goods and Services Tax (GST).
The highest-ever goods and services tax (GST) evasion has been done by the online money gaming industry.
The Congress party has criticized Prime Minister Narendra Modi's handling of GST reforms, calling them inadequate and demanding an apology for the tax imposed on essential items. They argue that the reforms are merely a 'band-aid' solution and that the government should address the states' demand for extended compensation.
The Director General of Goods and Services Tax Intelligence (DGGI) has slapped its heftiest tax notice of Rs 21,000 crore on Bengaluru-based Gameskraft Technology (GTPL) for allegedly evading GST on the betting amount. Gameskraft has dubbed the notice a "departure from the well-established law of the land". The company is accused of promoting online betting through card, casual and fantasy games like Rummy Culture, Gamezy and Rummy Time.
Customs officials in Kerala conducted raids across the state, seizing luxury vehicles illegally imported from Bhutan with forged documents. The operation, dubbed 'Operation Numkhor,' targeted multiple locations and uncovered a network involved in smuggling cars, gold, and drugs.
The 2023-2024 figures showed that the size of the industry, excluding those having an annual turnover of Rs 20 crore, could be Rs 30,652 crore, assuming no tax evasion.
GST authorities have issued show cause notices worth Rs 1 lakh crore to online gaming companies for tax evasion so far, a senior official said on Wednesday. The official, however, said there is no data yet of foreign gaming companies registering in India since October 1. The government has amended the GST law, making it mandatory for overseas online gaming companies to register in India from October 1.
Plans for big bang reforms in the GST regime by Diwali, the Putin-Trump summit and S&P upgrading India's sovereign credit rating are likely to instil optimism in the domestic equity market in the week ahead, analysts said. Besides, trends in global markets and the trading activity of foreign investors would also impact domestic investors' sentiment.
After the massive tax evasion of GST by cryptocurrency service provider WazirX, the Directorate General of GST Intelligence has come down heavily on cryptocurrency exchanges operating in the country, said sources. "Around half a dozen offices of cryptocurrency service providers have been searched and massive Goods and Service Tax (GST) evasion has been detected by DGGI," sources told ANI. Crypto wallet and exchange are platforms where merchants and consumers can transact with digital assets like bitcoin, ethereum, ripple, etc.
GST authorities have expanded the probe into alleged tax evasion by fintech firm BharatPe to include reported issuance of fake invoices by those close to the firm's ousted co-founder Ashneer Grover, an official said. GST authorities are now scrutinising BharatPe books of the last four years to see if bogus invoices were issued for services as well. BharatPe had stripped Grover and his wife Madhuri Jain of all positions after a preliminary report of an external audit commissioned by the fintech firm's board showed that the duo indulged in alleged misdeeds and financial irregularities.
Six years after the rollout of the biggest indirect tax reform in India, Goods and Services Tax (GST) revenue of Rs 1.5 lakh crore every month has become a new normal and tax officers are focusing on dealing with fraudsters who are adopting newer modus operandi to game the system, causing loss to the exchequer. To apprehend black sheep, who operate as syndicates and create fake entities on the basis of forged documents to claim input tax credit (ITC), tax officers have started using data analytics, artifical intelligence and machine learning aiming to curb evasion, which was over Rs 3 lakh crore since inception of GST. It was over Rs 1 lakh crore in 2022-23. Thinktank Global Trade Research Initiative (GTRI) said the most critical pending GST reform is upgradation of GST Network to prevent fake supplies and fraudulent claims of Input Tax Credit (ITC).
Following detailed questioning, journalist Mahesh Langa was arrested by the Crime Branch on Tuesday morning, Deputy Commissioner of Police (Crime) Ajit Rajian said. "The central GST had found some suspicious transactions in bogus firms floated in the name of Mahesh Langa's wife and father using forged documents. Langa has been arrested for further investigation," he said.
About 1.2 trillion tax evasion cases have been detected and as many as 59,000 entities identified for verification in order to ascertain whether they are fake.
The Centre has recovered around Rs 95.86 crore from at least 11 crypto exchanges for evading goods and services tax (GST), according to data released by Parliament on Monday. The amount includes interest and penalty. The GST investigation department has detected a total tax evasion of Rs 81.54 crore by crypto exchanges that include WazirX, Coin DCX, CoinSwitch Kuber, Buy Ucoin, UnoCoin and Flitpay, among other exchanges. In a written reply to Lok Sabha, minister of state (MoS) for finance Pankaj Chaudhary said 11 cases of GST evasion by cryptocurrency exchanges have been detected by central GST formations.
Jailed journalist Mahesh Langa, already facing multiple charges, has been booked in a fresh case for allegedly extorting Rs 40 lakh from a real estate agent by threatening to malign his image and implicate him in a false case. This is the fifth FIR registered against him since his arrest in October 2023 for an alleged Goods and Services Tax (GST) scam. The latest case was registered based on a complaint by Janak Thakor, a real estate agent, who alleged that Langa threatened to write negative articles about him and trap him in a false case unless he paid the money. Langa has been in jail since his arrest in October and is facing charges in four previous cases registered by Ahmedabad, Gandhinagar, and Rajkot police.
Gross GST collections in August grew 10 per cent to about Rs 1.75 lakh crore, reflecting higher domestic consumption. As per the government data released on Sunday, gross GST revenues from domestic transactions grew 9.2 per cent to about Rs 1.25 lakh crore. Revenues from import of goods were up 12.1 per cent to Rs 49,976 crore.
Insurance companies may soon face goods and services tax (GST) audits as tax authorities plan a "deep dive" into their business practices to check for the possibility of a raft of tax-linked irregularities. Several insurance companies are being probed for wrongly availing of the input tax credit without the underlying supply of goods and services based on fake invoices generated by their channel partners and intermediaries. "We want to deep dive into the overall business and see if there are further taxation issues besides commissions, which are already being investigated," a senior official of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs said.
These cases are being reopened under Section 147 of the Income Tax Act, which empowers the department to reassess income if it believes that taxable income has escaped assessment.
'We crossed Rs 1.7 trillion in three months this financial year.'
Tax evaders, BEWARE! The Income Tax department is using AI data analytics to bust fake deductions, flag HRA fraud, and trace digital footprints.
'This year's detection of frauds and probable recovery will be mainly driven by several compliance measures put in place, and amendments made to the GST regime to plug revenue leakages particularly in new-edge sectors.'
The Trump trade shock is a chance to push long-overdue reforms, rather than tinker with tariffs to appease the US, suggests M Govinda Rao.
With audits and greater emphasis on anti-evasion measures, more tax demands will lead to more litigation. So, it is a bit early to start celebrating. GST is still work in progress.
Goods and Services Tax collections jumped 10.4 per cent to over Rs 1.72 lakh crore in January, reflecting buoyant economic activity and setting the stage for the next phase of GST reforms. This is the second-highest monthly collection ever and marks the third month in this financial year with a collection of Rs 1.70 lakh crore or more, a finance ministry statement said on Wednesday.
The GST revenues for August 2023 have shown a growth of 11 per cent year on year due to increased compliance and less evasion, Revenue secretary Sanjay Malhotra said on Friday. The collection from Goods and Services Tax (GST) was Rs 1,43,612 crore in August 2022. "Roughly numbers are in the range of 11 per cent year on year growth as in earlier months," Malhotra told reporters.
At least 120 insurance intermediaries and aggregators from across the country are under scrutiny, mainly from Mumbai, Gurugram and Bengaluru.
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