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Tax officials have detected about 18,000 such fake companies registered under the Goods and Services Tax (GST), which are involved in tax evasion of about Rs 25,000 crore. In a recent nationwide drive against fake companies, officials identified 73,000 companies which they suspected were set up merely to avail 'Input Tax Credit' (ITC) without any actual sale of goods. And thus these companies defrauded the government exchequer.
Tax officials said, “In the second nationwide drive against fake registrations, we had identified around 73,000 GSTINs for verification. Of these, about 18,000 were found to be non-existent. These fake companies were involved in tax evasion of approximately Rs 24,550 crore.”
Voluntary GST payment of approximately Rs 70 crore was made by companies during the special campaign. The government is taking targeted action to check fake GST registrations and more and more physical verification is taking place. The second nationwide campaign against fake registrations ran from 16 August to the end of October.
Under the first nationwide campaign against fake registration, which ran from May 16 to July 15 last year, 21,791 fake companies with GST registrations were detected. During the campaign, information about suspected tax evasion of Rs 24,010 crore was also revealed.
