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Informist, Tuesday, Aug 13, 2024

 

NEW DELHI – The Centre and state goods and services tax officers have decided to launch a special two-month drive from Friday to weed out fake GST registrations to prevent revenue loss to the government, the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs said. 

 

"The second special all-India drive may be launched by all central and state tax administrations from Aug 16 to Oct 15 to detect suspicious or fake GSTINs (goods and services tax identification numbers) and to conduct requisite verification and further remedial action to weed out these fake billers from the GST ecosystem and to safeguard government revenue," the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs said in an instruction to field officers on Monday.

 

This is the second such drive to identify fake and suspicious registrations under the GST regime. The first drive was launched on May 16, 2023 for two months but was extended for another month till Aug 14. The indirect taxes body, along with states, had launched this special drive to weed out fake invoicing and fraudulent seeking of input tax credit.

 

Last year, a National Coordination Committee headed by Member, GST, Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs, including senior officers from different states and Centre was formed to take decisions and monitor the progress of the first special drive. This Committee had met again on Jul 11 and decided to relaunch the drive this year as it was found quite effective in weeding out fake registrations.

 

"The Committee felt that there may be a need for further focused and coordinated action by central and state tax authorities to clean up the tax base and to take concerted action against the fake registrations and fake or bogus invoices, on the same pattern as was done during the said (first) drive," the apex indirect taxes body said.

 

In the last drive between May and August 2023, the government found that 29,273 bogus companies were involved in input tax credit evasion of 440.15 bln rupees.

 

In March, Informist had reported, citing a senior finance ministry official, that of the total GST evasion in the country, 1.0-1.5% was through fake input tax credits. "Going forward, the government's focus will be to integrate the Directorate General of GST Intelligence to be able to better weed out the bogus entities from the system," the official had said.  End

 

Reported by Priyasmita Dutta

Edited by Vandana Hingorani

 

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