The Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) will initiate a two-month special drive against fake GST registrations starting Friday, August 16. This follows a similar drive last May, which uncovered around 22,000 fake GST registrations and suspected GST evasion totalling over Rs 24,000 crore.
The new drive, set to run from August 16 to October 15, 2024, aims to further clean up the tax base. The GST Network, in collaboration with the Directorate General of Analytics and Risk Management (DGARM) and CBIC, will use advanced data analytics to identify high-risk GSTINs. Suspicious GSTINs will be sent to jurisdictional tax officers for verification.
“The second Special All-India Drive may be launched by all Central and State Tax administrations from 16th August 2024 to 15th October 2024 to detect suspicious/ fake GSTINs and to conduct requisite verification and further remedial action to weed out these fake billers from the GST eco-system and to safeguard government revenue,” the CBIC said in an instruction to field formations.
If a GSTIN is found to be fictitious or non-existent, the tax officers will suspend and cancel the registration and block input tax credit (ITC). Additionally, efforts will be made to identify and act against the masterminds behind these fake registrations, including recovering government dues and potentially attaching properties or bank accounts.
The CBIC has instructed field offices to report any new methods or patterns of fraud discovered during this drive. The GST Council Secretariat will compile these findings and share them with tax administrations nationwide.
The first drive, which ran from May 16 to July 15, 2023, identified 21,791 non-existent entities and detected suspected tax evasion of Rs 24,010 crore (Rs 8,805 crore at the state level and Rs 15,205 crore at the Centre).
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