The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) has revealed that about 25 per cent of suspected Goods and Services Tax (GST) accounts do not exist or have vanished after availing benefits of around Rs 15,000 crore, according to a report by the Times of India on Friday. The tax authorities used artificial intelligence (AI) and data analytics to identify around 69,000 suspected accounts after scrubbing the GST database.
According to the TOI report, the evasion and fake accounts have been unearthed as part of an ongoing two-month special drive to weed out fake accounts registered with the GST Network. The drive, which ends July 15, found 17,000 of them to be bogus, the report said.
The role of entities, including some big names in business, is also being looked into. According to the report, a top leading food delivery service provider is believed to have availed of manpower services from companies which were found to be bogus.
Currently, there are 1.39 crore taxpayers registered under GST regime. The GST collections in June rose 12 per cent to more than Rs 1.61 lakh crore, the finance ministry said on July 1. It was for the fourth time, the gross GST collection has crossed Rs 1.60 lakh crore mark.
Delhi had the highest success rate or the largest number of fakes detected from the list of suspect registrations, the TOI report said citing government sources.
Tax officials said there was no plan to tighten registration norms, saying the idea was to make the process smooth for honest taxpayers instead of troubling them with higher compliance. However, the CBIC does plan periodic checks to ensure that the benefits are not misused, as per the report.
“There are some decisions that have already been taken by the GST Council on the issues, we will implement them. The idea is to ensure that leakages are prevented,” the newspaper quoted an official as saying. The issue is also likely to come up at the GST Council meeting on July 11, where the information will be shared with finance ministers of the states.