The Central Tax formations under Central Board of Indirect Taxes and Customs (CBIC) detected Rs 36,374 crore worth of fake Input Tax credit (ITC) in the Financial Year 2023-24, Minister of State for Finance Pankaj Chaudhary informed the Lok Sabha on Monday.
In a written reply, the MoS said these involved 9,190 cases in the FY 2023-24.
The MoS said that in 2022-23, as many as 7,231 cases were detected amounting to Rs 24,140 crore. The voluntary deposit in the period was Rs 2,484 crore with 153 people arrested.
Further in 2023-24, a total 9,190 cases were detected amounting to Rs 36,374 crore. The voluntary deposit in the period was Rs 3,413 crore with 182 persons arrested.
MoS Chaudhary also highlighted the steps taken by the Government to curb the ITC frauds that includes providing for risk based biometric-based Aadhaar authentication, physical verification in high-risk cases, requirement of bank account furnished as a part of registration process to be in the name of the registered person and obtained on PAN of the registered person and also linked with Aadhaar.
He also highlighted other measures like restriction on availment of ITC to invoices and debit notes furnished by the supplier in their statement of outward supplies; Filing of FORM GSTR-1 made mandatory; provisional attachment of property can be done; restriction on generation of e-way bills by non- compliant taxpayers; reduction in threshold limit for issue of e-invoice for B2B transactions from Rs 10 crore to Rs 5 crore; and regular use of data analytics to identify or track risky GST registrations to detect tax evasion.