MANISH GUPTA
Ranchi, Aug 4: Emboldened by the recovery of Rs 33 crore from tax evaders in the first four months till July 31, the Central Goods and Service Tax Commissionerate (CGST), Ranchi, plans to double its realisation to Rs 100 crore this financial year.
“Last fiscal, we realised Rs 56 crore in tax, interest and penalty from defaulters and tax evaders. We hope to increase it significantly this financial year to Rs 100 crore,” CGST Ranchi Principal Commissioner SK Singh told latagar24.com.
In the current fiscal, the preventive measures taken up by the department for revenue augmentation have resulted in realisation of more than Rs 33 crore till July 31, 2022. The corresponding figure in the year-ago period was Rs 5.84 crore.
As for the sudden spike in recoveries and the optimism to double the amount this fiscal, Singh said, “This is all due to data analytics and data mining done by our officers and also the extra vigil, home work and initiative taken up by the department people.”
The revenue augmentation drive is being done under the heads of arrear recovery, anti-evasion work, e-way bill checking, recovery from defaulters and scrutiny of returns. The department finds many businesses using fake invoices to claim Input tax Credit (ITC).
Sources in the department inform that a large number of businesses in the coal and iron industry in the state have used fake invoices and fake bills from non-existing companies to claim ITC leading to large scale tax evasion. Recoveries are being made from them.
With GST completing five years of run dotted with amendments, simplification and use of better technology, CGST officials are confident that soon tax evasion will come down to insignificant levels and ITC fraud will end in the next two to three years.
“We had the provision of auto-population initially but it did not work as the large quantum of data from a large country like ours was difficult to match. We are slowly moving towards e-invoicing. With integration of different data, tax evasion will end,” said an official.
The e-way bill was introduced in 2018. E-invoicing was started last fiscal for all businesses with turnover of Rs 50 crore and above. It is learnt that by October 2022, the limit will be cut to Rs 10 crore, and by April 2023, it will be further lowered to Rs 5 crore.
