Ranchi, Shakeel Akhtar: Central GST and Central Excise have identified 135 paper traders of Ranchi Zone. These traders have evaded tax of Rs 177.20 crore. Along with this, Rs 202.04 crore has been recovered as Input Tax Credit (ITC) from the Central Public Sector Undertaking. This is the biggest amount ever to be recovered from a single company in the state. Under the guidance of Chief Commissioner Bibi Mohapatra, departmental officers investigated 169 traders with suspicious registration numbers in the state. In this, 135 registration numbers were found to be fake.
These people, involved in the trade of coal, iron and some other commodities, did business by taking registration numbers on fake documents. In this sequence, these traders evaded 177.20 crore tax. During the investigation, the officials blocked the ITC ledgers of 66 paper traders. Rs 29.64 crore is deposited in this. The ledger has been blocked to prevent wrongful transfer of ITC to other traders.
Some of these traders who were doing business by taking registration number on fake documents were identified and Rs 5.94 crore of ITC item has been recovered from them. It was informed by the Intelligence Unit of CGST that only challans are being issued by 31 coal traders of Dhanbad area. On the basis of this information, traders with related registrations were checked. It was found that 21 traders do not exist anywhere. These traders have not even done any kind of real business. The investigation is still going on in connection with these fake traders. GST officials have recovered Rs 202 crore as ITC from the Central Public Sector Undertaking. This recovery has been done in the financial years 2022-23 and 2023-24.
Avail ITC on purchase of coal and other equipment
CGST officials found that the company availed ITC on the purchase of material such as coal and other equipment used in power generation. But did not return it to the department. As per rules, the ITC amount should have been deposited by the company itself in the government treasury. But the company did not do this. After the initiative taken by the departmental officers, the company returned ITC 80 crores on January 2023, 66.36 crores on 20 April 2023. After this, in the light of the summons issued by the department on May 2, Rs 55.68 crore was returned on May 19, 2023. In this way, the department recovered Rs 202.04 crore from the company on account of ITC. Additional Commissioner Ashish Mishra, Assistant Commissioner Kishore Barwa, Superintendent Dinesh Kumar, Inspector Nishikant Gautam were involved in the investigation and action taken by the department against tax evasion.