CGST officials bust network of 23 firms for claiming input tax credit of Rs 91 crore

GST

Based upon specific intelligence, the officers of the Anti Evasion branch of Central Goods and Service Tax (CGST) Commissionerate, Delhi (West) have unearthed a case of availment/utilization and passing on of inadmissible input tax credit (ITC) through goods less invoices of Rs 91 crore (approx). The modus operandi involved floating of multiple firms with the intent to avail/utilize & passing on of inadmissible credit.

The firms involved in this network are M/s Girdhar Enterprises, M/s Arun Sales, M/s Akshay Traders, M/s Shree Padmavati Enterprises and 19 others. These 23 firms were floated in order to generate goods-less invoices with an intent to pass on fraudulent ITC without paying actual GST to the government. Late Shri Dinesh Gupta, Shri Shubham Gupta, Shri Vinod Jain and Shri Yogesh Goel were associated in the said business of generating/selling fake invoices. These entities are dealing in various commodities and involved in generation of goods-less invoices worth Rs. 551 croreand passing inadmissible ITC amounting to Rs. 91crore(approx.). All the three accused tendered their voluntary statement admitting their guilt.

Therefore, Shri Shubham Gupta, Shri Vinod Jain and Shri Yogesh Goel knowingly committed offences under Section 132(1)(b) and 132(1)(c) of the CGST Act, 2017 which are cognizable and non-bailable offences as per the provisions of Section 132(5) and are punishable under clause (i) of the sub section (1) of Section 132 of the Act ibid. Accordingly, they were arrested under Section 132 of the CGST Act on 10.07.2021 and remanded to judicial custody by the duty Metropolitan Magistrate for 14 days. Further Investigations are in progress.

Delhi Zone has been making sustained efforts to check evasion of GST, leading to detection of Rs. 91.256 crore in the present FY and 3 persons have been arrested in these matters.

GST Revenue collection for June2021

GST Revenue Collection

The gross GST revenue collected in the month of June’ 2021 is₹92,849 crore of which CGST is ₹16,424 crore, SGST is ₹20,397, IGST is ₹49,079 crore (including ₹25,762 crore collected on import of goods) and Cess is ₹6,949 crore (including ₹809 crore collected on import of goods).The above figure includes GST collection from domestic transactions between 5thJune to 5th July’2021 since taxpayers were given various relief measures in the form of waiver/reduction in interest on delayed return filing for 15 days for the return filing month June’21 for the taxpayers with the aggregate turnover uptoRs. 5 crore in the wake of covid pandemic second wave.

During this month the government has settled ₹ 19,286 crore to CGST and ₹ 16,939 crore to SGST from IGST as regular settlement.

The revenues for the month of June 2021 are 2% higher than the GST revenues in the same month last year.

GST collection after posting above Rs. 1 lakh crore mark for eight months in a row, the collection in June’2021 dropped below Rs. 1 lakh crore. The GST collection for June’2021 is related to the business transactions made during May’2021. During May’2021, most of the States/UTs were under either complete or partial lock down due to COVID. The e-way bill data for the month of May 2021 shows that during the month, 3.99 crore e-way bills were generated as compared to 5.88 crore in the month of April 2021, down by more than 30%.

However, with reduction in caseload and easing of lockdowns, the e-way bills generated during June 2021 is 5.5 crore which indicates recovery of trade and business. The daily average generation of e-way bill for the first two weeks of April 2021 was 20 lakh, which came down to 16 lakh in last week of April 2021 and further to 12 lakh in the two weeks between 9th to 22nd May. Thereafter, the average generation of e-way bills has been increasing and has reached again to 20 lakh level since week beginning 20th June. Therefore, it is expected that while the GST revenues have dipped during the month of June, the revenues will see an increase again from July 2021 onwards.