On the 5th of July, a senior tax official stated that the GST authorities have cancelled over 4,900 fake GST registrations, since the 16th of May, 2023. Additionally, the authorities have also identified around 17,000 non-existent GSTINs in the ongoing pan-India drive against fake registrations.
As per PTI, the official added that the authorities have also detected tax evasion of around Rs 15,000 crore during this process.
Shashank Priya is a member of the Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC). He stated that in the drive against fake registration, till July 4, over 69,600 GST Identification Numbers (GSTINs) have been selected for physical verification by field tax officers.
During this physical verification, around 59,000 GSTINs were verified by the field officers. However, the officers found that around 16,989 GSTINs were non-existent.
Taking action on these GSTINs, around 11,000 GSTINs have been suspended while the registration of 4,972 GSTINs has been cancelled.
Speaking at the ASSOCHAM’s National Conclave on GST, Priya said this involved tax evasion of over Rs 15,000 crore, blocking of input tax credit (ITC) was Rs 1,506 crore, and recovered taxes worth Rs 87 crore.
The two-month-long pan-India drive against fake GST registration began on the 16th of May and will end on the 15th of May.
Fake registration poses a significant problem under the GST system. Fraudsters engage in this practice by issuing fake invoices to wrongfully claim Input Tax Credit (ITC), thereby defrauding the government’s revenue.
Earlier, on the 1st of July, CBIC chairman Vivek Johri said that GST officers have busted 304 syndicates involving 9,000 fake GSTINs and input tax credit (ITC) claims of Rs 25,000 crore in the ongoing drive against bogus firms.
The CBIC chief flagged that only 40 percent of the corporate income taxpayer base is registered under Goods and Services Tax (GST).
Currently, there are around 14 million businesses that are registered under the GST. This is nearly double the number of businesses that were earlier registered during the indirect tax regime, that is, before the rollout of the Goods and Services Tax which was implemented in India on the 1st of July, 2017.
