A demand notice of Rs 1.45 lakh cr has been issued to nearly 1500 businesses in December by the Goods and Services tax authorities. Because of the inconsistencies in annual returns and input tax credit claims for the financial year 2018, the notices were issued as per the officials.
Due to the last date for serving the notices for the 2017-18 period which was December 31, 2023, there is a significant volume of notices, as per the official, and Rs 1.45 lakh cr consists of penalty as well as interest.
Moreover, insufficient tax retrieval from evasion cases resulted in a significant issuance of notices. In the ongoing fiscal year, GST officers uncovered evasion amounting to approximately ₹1.51 lakh crore.
However, the actual recovery by December 30 was only ₹18,541 crore, falling far short of the internal target of ₹50,000 crore as highlighted in the report.
According to an official cited by the newspaper, out of a total of 72.5 lakh GST returns filed in 2017-18, only a fraction underwent scrutiny for potential underpayment of taxes.
By December 30, approximately 48,000 GST returns from 2017-18 and 2018-19 underwent scrutiny due to detected irregularities or flagged issues within the system, according to the report.
Having passed the deadline for the 2017-18 period, the department has shifted its focus to the fiscal year 2018-19, expecting a potential increase in the number of notices in the upcoming days.
Moreover, the government has extended the deadline for issuing demand notices concerning return discrepancies for 2018-19 and 2019-20 to April 30, moving it from the initial deadline of March 31.
At present, the government announced that GST officers identified 29,273 fraudulent businesses engaged in false Input Tax Credit (ITC) claims amounting to ₹44,015 crore over eight months until December 2023.
This discovery occurred during a campaign targeting counterfeit registrations, resulting in safeguarding revenue worth ₹4,646 crore.
During the October-December period, 4,153 suspicious businesses engaging in potential ITC evasion worth roughly ₹12,036 crore were detected. Among these, the Central GST Authorities found 2,358 of these deceitful entities.
