According to the most recent update in Parliament, Chinese handset manufacturers such as Xiaomi, Realme, Oppo, Vivo, and Oneplus have avoided paying Goods and Services Tax (GST) totalling Rs 1,108.98 crore and customs duties totalling Rs 7,966.09 crore over the last 5 years until 2023-24.
Rajeev Chandrasekhar, Minister of State for Electronics and Information Technology, said that investigations into the aforementioned tax evasions had begun. The data on GST evasion of Rs. 1,108.98 crore and customs duty evasion of Rs. 7,966.09 crore spans the years 2017-18 to 2023-24 (up to July 1).
The minister further said that during the fiscal year 2022, leading Chinese mobile device firms’ combined sales in India totalled Rs 1.5 lakh crore. More than 75,000 individuals were employed directly by these businesses in production, while an additional 80,000 people worked in sales and operations.
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The firms are advised to submit the necessary tax sums, interest payments, and fines, it was further said. Narain Dass Gupta, a Rajya Sabha member, presented a query on which the information was based.
In terms of GST evasion, the minister stated that the corporation dodged Rs. 48.25 crore, with some of this evasion still under investigation. The government has recently recovered Rs. 51.25 crore from the corporation for the same evasion. Lenovo has also been accused of Rs 42.36 crore in GST evasion. However, no recoveries have been made as of yet, according to the Minister of Electronics and IT in parliament.
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For customs duty evasion, Xiaomi has prevented filing the customs duties of Rs 89 lakh, as per the minister who furnished a precise explanation. The firm’s case would get finished as a result of their payment of the overdue sum of Rs 31,77,721 in interest, and Rs. 13,30,143 in penalties.
During the 2019-20 fiscal year, the same corporation avoided paying Rs. 653.02 crore rupees in customs tax, instead paying only Rs. 46 lakhs. In response to this dodge, the government has sent the corporation a show-cause notice addressing the outstanding shortfall.
In the fiscal year 2019-20, Oppo Mobile India evaded customs duty worth Rs. 4,389 crores but only paid Rs. 450 crores towards the unpaid amount, while Vivo India avoided customs duty worth Rs. 2,217 crores but only paid Rs. 72 crores towards the evaded amount.
In all, Vivo is accused of evading Rs. 2,875 crore in customs taxes between fiscal years 2021 and 2023. According to the minister’s statement, the government has only recovered Rs. 117 crore thus far.
