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The Gujarat State Tax Department (SGST) on Saturday said it busted cases of tax evasion in the food and restaurant sector under the GST Composition Scheme. Based on specific complaints and intelligence inputs, the state tax officials first visited several premises as customers to assess actual business activity and billing processes. Thereafter, the SGST department conducted coordinated search operations on September 21 and 22 across 25 premises linked to 16 taxpayers operating in Ahmedabad, Vadodara, Surat, Gandhinagar, Bhavnagar, Junagadh and Rajkot.
The department, in a statement on Saturday said, “Investigations revealed that taxpayers in this sector were engaging in fraudulent practices such as use of multiple QR codes to divert payments to undisclosed bank accounts, suppression of sales by not issuing invoices, and wilfully underreporting actual turnover to remain within the ceiling limit of Rs1.50 crore so as to take undue advantage of the Composition Scheme for pecuniary gain.”
“These manipulations were clearly intended to conceal actual sales turnover and evade legitimate tax liabilities. The investigations have so far unearthed unaccounted transactions to the tune of Rs52.07 Crore involving a tax evasion of about Rs4.88 crore (including interest and penalty),” it further said.
The State Tax Department also said it had initiated recovery proceedings and was pursuing appropriate legal action to safeguard government revenue.
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