GST evasion of Rs 25000 crore committed using 18 thousand fake companies

New Delhi| Tax officials have detected around 18,000 such fake companies registered under the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which are involved in tax evasion of around Rs 25,000 crore. In a recent countrywide campaign against fictitious companies the authorities identified 73,000 companies which they suspected had been set up to avail themselves of only ‘input tax credit’ (ITC) without any actual sale of goods and thus defrauded the government exchequer.

Tax officials reported, in the second nationwide campaign against “fake registrations we had identified about 73,000 GSTINs for verification. About 18,000 of these were found to be non-existent. These fake companies were involved in tax evasion of around Rs 24,550 crore.”

During the special campaign, voluntary GST payments of about Rs 70 crore were made by the companies. The government is taking targeted action to check fake GST registration and more and more physical verification is taking place. The second nationwide campaign against fraudulent registration took place from 16 August to the end of October.

As part of the first nationwide campaign against fake registration, which ran from May 16 to July 15 last year, 21,791 fake companies with GST registration were detected. Information about suspected tax evasion of Rs 24,010 crore was also revealed during the campaign.