TG govt seeks Centre’s help in GST fraud

Hyderabad: Following the big GST scam which came to light recently in which cases were booked against former Chief Secretary Somesh Kumar and a few top officials of the Commercial Taxes wing, the state government has sought the help of the Union Government to find out if there were more companies which had evaded payment of GST.

Official sources said that the state Commercial Taxes authorities spoke to the GST Hyderabad Commissionerate and requested the Union Finance ministry to help them in preventing frauds in the GST payments.

“Joint operation with central officials for maximum compliance on return filing will be given top priority to contain GST frauds,” said the sources. A special coordination team would be constituted involving state Commercial Taxes and the GST officials to jointly monitor the tax collections from all registered traders on a regular basis.

A top official said the investigation revealed that the major worrying factor was the tampering with the details of GST payment data and input credit tax at the high level.

In some cases, data available on the servers was misused to benefit the traders who evaded GST. All these issues were discussed and an action plan would be prepared in consultation with the GST Commissionerate. The officials said that strengthening the IT infrastructure for improving the operational efficiency and implementation of face-less GST audit and assessment would be given top priority to bring more transparency in the tax collection form this year. Sources said that identifying the potential dealers who indulge in fraudulent transactions was a big task given to state and central officials to check growing fraud in the GST payments.