GST: Tax Officers Get Power to Sentence Jail Term to Tax Evaders

Upcoming GST regime will be giving some serious authority to the GST officers to make a vigilant and strict move towards the fickle minded business units. The GST regime in its provisions and clause gives the power to the GST officer to term 5 years of jail to any convicted businessman in the case of proved conviction. The GST officer can also impose a heavy penalty over the particular convicted businessman or trader who is booked under the tax evasion case by the vigilant team.

The drafting committee of GST laws and provisions were made in absolute transparency, conveyed by senior tax consultant RS Goyal in a workshop on GST being organized by the Tax Practitioners’ Association (TPA). He said that “While drafting the GST Law, transparency and accountability were given utmost importance, in GST very strict provisions are being mentioned about search action at offices, residences, and warehouses. If a trader shut down his establishments and escape from the spot owing to fear of action, then officials will have the power to break the locks and enter the establishment. They also have the right to break locks of shelf and boxes. Even they can seize the computer and hard disk of the computer and take along with them.” All these provisions are the part of search, seizure, conviction and sentence included into the GST.

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Further explaining, the tax official specified that, in the scenario of special investigations, if the total tax evasion comes out to be more than 5 crores than the tax official of GST can book the trader and sentence him a 5-year jail term along with the strict penalty. While on claiming and realization of input tax credit (ITC) or in the case of not getting registration, the penalty will be evaluated at minimum INR 10 thousand.

The provisions like if a merchant buys C-form, F-form, and H-form at a reduced rate between April 1 and June 30, then the trader can get the facility of on sale at that particular rate if a trade shows all these three forms by September 30. In the opposite event, the trader would get the lesser concessional rate for CST from input tax rebate. Mr. Goyal took the topic of provision which is being made easy for the Form-49 in the GST and explained a bit about the working and procedures of the GST e-way bill also.